Markov Decision Processes for Screening and Treatment of Chronic Diseases

Lauren N. Steimle () and Brian T. Denton ()
Additional contact information
Lauren N. Steimle: University of Michigan
Brian T. Denton: University of Michigan

Chapter Chapter 6 in Markov Decision Processes in Practice, 2017, pp 189-222 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract In recent years, Markov decision processes (MDPs) and partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDPs) have found important applications to medical decision making in the context of prevention, screening, and treatment of diseases. In this chapter, we provide a review of state-of-the-art models and methods that have been applied to chronic diseases. We provide a tutorial about how to formulate and solve these important problems emphasizing some of the challenges specific to chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. Then, we illustrate important considerations for model formulation and solution methods through two examples. The first example is an MDP model for optimal control of drug treatment decisions for managing the risk of heart disease and stroke in patients with type 2 diabetes. The second example is a POMDP model for optimal design of biomarker-based screening policies in the context of prostate cancer. We end the chapter with a discussion of the challenges of using MDPs and POMDPs for medical contexts and describe some important future directions for research.

Keywords: Prostate Cancer; Human Immunodeficiency Virus; Prostate Specific Antigen; Optimal Policy; Action Space (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:isochp:978-3-319-47766-4_6

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783319477664

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-47766-4_6

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in International Series in Operations Research & Management Science from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().