BMJ 1999;319:508-512 ( 21 August )

Education and debate

Methods in health service research

An introduction to bayesian methods in health technology assessment

This is the third of four articles

David J Spiegelhalter, senior statistician ^a,  Jonathan P Myles, research assistant ^a,  David R Jones, professor of medical statistics ^b,  Keith R Abrams, senior lecturer in medical statistics ^b. 

^a MRC Biostatistics Unit, Institute of Public Health, Cambridge CB2 2SR, ^b Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University of Leicester, Leicester LE1 6TP Edited by Nick Black. 

Correspondence to: Dr Spiegelhalter david.spiegelhalter@mrc-bsu.cam.ac.uk

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Bayes's theorem arose from a posthumous publication in 1763 by Thomas Bayes, a non-conformist minister from Tunbridge Wells. Although it gives a simple and uncontroversial result in probability theory, specific uses of the theorem have been the subject of considerable controversy for more than two centuries. In recent years a more balanced and pragmatic perspective has emerged, and in this paper we review current thinking on the value of the Bayesian approach to health technology assessment.

A concise definition of bayesian methods in health technology assessment has not been established, but we suggest the following: the explicit quantitative use of external evidence in the design, monitoring, analysis, interpretation, and reporting of a health technology assessment. This approach acknowledges that judgments about the benefits of a new technology will rarely be based solely on the results of a single study but should synthesise evidence from multiple sourcesfor example, pilot studies, trials . . . [Full text of this article]

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Bayes Theorem---12 years ago

James E Parker
bmj.com, 23 Aug 1999 [Full text]