Bootstrapping Method
The specific procedure of repeatedly resampling, with replacement, from a dataset to empirically approximate the sampling distribution of a statistic of interest.
Encyclopaedia
Explore comprehensive, evidence-informed explanations of key health economics concepts, including their development, application and relationships to other concepts. Published entries are validated through human expert review.
Bottom-Up Costing
A costing method that estimates total cost by measuring detailed resource use at the individual patient level and aggregating those measurements.
Break-Even Analysis
An analysis identifying the point at which the costs and benefits, or revenues, of an activity are equal.
Break-Even Point
The level of output or activity at which total revenue equals total cost, so an organisation neither gains nor loses money.
Breakeven Analysis
An analysis identifying the point at which total costs equal total revenues or benefits, so an activity neither gains nor loses value.
Brier Score
A measure of probabilistic prediction accuracy, the mean squared difference between predicted probabilities and actual observed binary outcomes, lower being better.
Budget Impact
The projected change in total spending for a payer or health system resulting from adopting a new treatment or policy.
Budget Impact Analysis
An assessment of how adopting a health technology or policy would change spending for a particular budget holder over a specified period.
Budget Impact Model
The analytical structure, typically built in a spreadsheet, used to estimate the financial consequences of adopting a new health technology.
Budget Impact Modelling
The practice of building and applying budget impact models to estimate the financial consequences of adopting a health technology.
C-Statistic
A measure of predictive discrimination equivalent to the area under the ROC curve, the probability of correctly ranking a random pair of individuals.
Calibration
The process of adjusting a model's unobserved or uncertain parameters so its predicted outputs match observed real-world data as closely as possible.
Calibration Assessment
An evaluation of how closely a calibrated model's predicted outputs match the observed data used as calibration targets, typically using formal fit statistics.
Cause-Specific Survival
The probability of surviving without dying from a specific cause of interest, treating deaths from other causes as censoring rather than a competing risk.
Censoring
A situation in survival analysis where the exact time of an event is not observed, either because the study ended or follow-up was lost.
Central Limit Theorem
A statistical theorem stating that the sample mean of enough independent, identically distributed variables approximates a normal distribution regardless of the underlying shape.
Chance Node
A point in a decision tree where the pathway followed is determined by probability rather than choice, branches summing to one.
Chi-Square Distribution
A continuous probability distribution arising from the sum of squared standard normal variables, underlying tests such as goodness of fit.
Choice Experiment
A stated preference method in which respondents repeatedly pick their preferred option from sets of hypothetical alternatives that vary across defined attributes.
Choice-Based Conjoint
A form of conjoint analysis in which respondents choose their preferred option from a set of alternatives rather than rating each one individually.