• Pediatric Infection and Vaccine
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.20-29
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• 2008

The basis of the economic evaluation of vaccination is the balance between the use of the resources (input) and the improvements that result from the vaccination (output). Techniques used for economic evaluation of vaccination are cost analysis, cost-minimization analysis, cost-effectiveness analysis, cost-utility analysis and cost-benefit analysis. Cost analysis seeks to characterize the costs of a given vaccination program. Cost-effective analysis is to helps policy-makers decide on the best use of allocated resources, whether cost-benefit analysis is to helps policy-makers decide on the overall allocation of resources. Cost-utility analysis is a specific form of cost-effective analysis in which outcomes are reduced to a common denominator such as the quality-adjusted life year (QALY) or disability-adjusted life year (DALY). Many economic analyses have been conducted on vaccines in the world, but there have been a little studies on economic evaluation on vaccines in Korea. This paper reviewed the methodology used to economic evaluation on vaccines and immunizations and addressed some examples of the methods.

• YAKHAK HOEJI
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• v.54 no.2
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• pp.126-133
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• 2010

This study was conducted to analyze cost-utility of bosentan versus iloprost indicated for pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) in a Korean healthcare setting from a payer's perspective. We constructed a Markov model to estimate total costs and outcomes for 1-year time horizon in a hypothetical cohort of 50-year-old patients with PAH. Base analysis showed that bosentan resulted in KW 5.5 billions saving and 18 quality-adjusted life year (QALY) gains per 100 patients compared to iloprost. Bosentan as a dominant strategy was found to be robust through various sensitivity analyses.

• Proceedings of the Korean Operations and Management Science Society Conference
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• 1999.04a
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• pp.426-426
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• 1999

;There are many sources of uncertainty in a typical production and inventory system. There is uncertainty as to how many items customers will demand during the next day, week, month, or year. There is uncertainty about delivery times of the product. Uncertainty exacts a toll from management in a variety of ways. A spurt in a demand or a delay in production may lead to stockouts, with the potential for lost revenue and customer dissatisfaction. Firms typically hold inventory to provide protection against uncertainty. A cushion of inventory on hand allows management to face unexpected demands or delays in delivery with a reduced chance of incurring a stockout. The proposed strategies are used for the design of a probabilistic inventory system. In the traditional approach to the design of an inventory system, the goal is to find the best setting of various inventory control policy parameters such as the re-order level, review period, order quantity, etc. which would minimize the total inventory cost. The goals of the analysis need to be defined, so that robustness becomes an important design criterion. Moreover, one has to conceptualize and identify appropriate noise variables. There are two main goals for the inventory policy design. One is to minimize the average inventory cost and the stockouts. The other is to the variability for the average inventory cost and the stockouts The total average inventory cost is the sum of three components: the ordering cost, the holding cost, and the shortage costs. The shortage costs include the cost of the lost sales, cost of loss of goodwill, cost of customer dissatisfaction, etc. The noise factors for this design problem are identified to be: the mean demand rate and the mean lead time. Both the demand and the lead time are assumed to be normal random variables. Thus robustness for this inventory system is interpreted as insensitivity of the average inventory cost and the stockout to uncontrollable fluctuations in the mean demand rate and mean lead time. To make this inventory system for robustness, the concept of utility theory will be used. Utility theory is an analytical method for making a decision concerning an action to take, given a set of multiple criteria upon which the decision is to be based. Utility theory is appropriate for design having different scale such as demand rate and lead time since utility theory represents different scale across decision making attributes with zero to one ranks, higher preference modeled with a higher rank. Using utility theory, three design strategies, such as distance strategy, response strategy, and priority-based strategy. for the robust inventory system will be developed.loped.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.15 no.19
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• pp.8503-8508
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• 2014

Background: After the WHO recommended HPV vaccination of the general population in 2009, government support of HPV vaccination programs was increased in many countries. However, this policy was not implemented in Korea due to perceived low cost-effectiveness. Thus, the aim of this study was to analyze the cost-utility of HPV vaccination programs targeted to high risk populations as compared to vaccination programs for the general population. Materials and Methods: Each study population was set to 100,000 people in a simulation study to determine the incremental cost-utility ratio (ICUR), then standard prevalence rates, cost, vaccination rates, vaccine efficacy, and the Quality-Adjusted Life-Years (QALYs) were applied to the analysis. In addition, sensitivity analysis was performed by assuming discounted vaccination cost. Results: In the socially vulnerable population, QALYs gained through HPV vaccination were higher than that of the general population (General population: 1,019, Socially vulnerable population: 5,582). The results of ICUR showed that the cost of HPV vaccination was higher for the general population than the socially vulnerable population. (General population: 52,279,255 KRW, Socially vulnerable population: 9,547,347 KRW). Compared with 24 million KRW/QALYs as the social threshold, vaccination of the general population was not cost-effective. In contrast, vaccination of the socially vulnerable population was strongly cost-effective. Conclusions: The results suggest the importance and necessity of government support of HPV vaccination programs targeted to socially vulnerable populations because a targeted approach is much more cost-effective. The implementation of government support for such vaccination programs is a critical strategy for decreasing the burden of HPV infection in Korea.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.143-155
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• 2016

Recently, a massive loss of life and property is occurring in Korea due to traffic accidents, with the rapid increase in cars. For improvement of traffic safety, the Korea Transportation Safety Authority intensively analyzes accident data in local governments with low traffic safety index, performs a field investigation to extract problems and offers local governments improvements for problems, by conducting the 'Special Survey of Actual Conditions of Traffic Safety' each year, starting 2008. But local governments cannot strongly push forward the improvement projects due to the limited budget and the uncertainty of the improvement plan effects. Therefore, this study suggested a model which applied the Utility concept to the AHP theory, in order to efficiently decide a priority of the improvement plans in accident black spots in consideration of the limited budget of local governments. The number of accidents in each spot for improvement and accident severity, traffic volume, pedestrian volume, the improvement project cost and the accident reduction effect were chosen as evaluation factors for deciding a priority, and data about the improvement plan costs and the accident reduction effects, traffic accidents and traffic volume in the spots to undergo the special research on the real condition of traffic accident in the past were collected from the existing studies. Then, regression analysis was carried out and the Utility Curve of each evaluation factor was computed. Based on the AHP analysis findings, this study devised a priority decision method which calculated the weight and the utility function of each evaluation factor and compared the total utility values. The AHP analysis findings showed that among the evaluation factors, accident severity had the biggest importance and it was followed by the improvement plan cost, the number of accidents, the improvement effect, traffic volume and pedestrian volume. The calculated utility function shows a rise in utility, as the variables of the 5 evaluation factors; the number of accidents, accident severity, the improvement plan effect, traffic volume and pedestrian volume increase and a fall in utility, as the variables of the improvement plan cost increase, since the improvement plan cost is included in the budget spent by a local government.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.50 no.4
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• pp.217-227
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• 2017

In terms of years of life lost to premature mortality, cancer imposes the highest burden in Korea. In order to reduce the burden of cancer, the Korean government has implemented cancer control programs aiming to reduce cancer incidence, to increase survival rates, and to decrease cancer mortality. However, these programs may paradoxically increase the cost burden. For examples, a cancer screening program for early detection could bring about over-diagnosis and over-treatment, and supplying medical services in a paternalistic manner could lead to defensive medicine or futile care. As a practical measure to reduce the cost burden of cancer, appropriate cancer care should be established. Ensuring appropriateness requires patient-doctor communication to ensure that utility values are shared and that autonomous decisions are made regarding medical services. Thus, strategies for reducing the cost burden of cancer through ensuring appropriate patient-centered care include introducing value-based medicine, conducting cost-utility studies, and developing patient decision aids.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.10 no.9
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• pp.4188-4206
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• 2016

Power control is widely used to reduce co-channel interference in wireless networks and guarantee the signal-to-interference plus noise ratio (SINR) of ongoing connections. This technique is also effective for wireless body area networks (WBANs). Although achieving satisfactory SINR is important for WBAN users, they may not be willing to achieve it at arbitrarily high power levels since power is a scarce resource in WBANs. Besides, for WBANs with different purposes, the QoS requirements and concern about the power consumption may be different. This motivates us to formulate the power control problem using the concepts from microeconomics and game theory. In this paper, the QoS objective is viewed as a utility function, which represents the degree of user satisfaction, while the power consumption is viewed as a cost function. The power control problem consequently becomes a non-cooperative multiplayer game, in which each player tries to maximize its net utility, i.e., the utility minus the cost. Within this framework, we investigate the Nash equilibrium existence and uniqueness in the game and derive the best response solution to reach the Nash equilibrium. To obtain the optimal transmission power in a distributed way, we further propose a utility-based and QoS-aware power control algorithm (UQoS-PCA). Tunable cost coefficient in UQoS-PCA enables this scheme to be flexible to satisfy diverse service requirements. Simulation results show the convergence and effectiveness of the proposed scheme as well as improvements over existing algorithm.

• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.164-171
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• 2013

In urban planning, road facility is used not only for the transportation purpose but also for the utility line space purpose such as electrical, gas, tele communication, heating, water, sewer, and so on. However, since these utilities are built by many different groups, it becomes very difficult to communicate each other. Delay in one party can cause another party's schedule delay but they don't commuicate often. Also, some delay in utility work can cause frequent pavement cut. And, this will impact on construction cost, schedule delay, low quality, user complain and cost. This study developed spatiotemporal decision model to prevent prequent utility cut for mega project such as new urban development project. In addition, this study developed utility cut management system to manage utility cut schedule under pavement. Finally, developed system was applied to new urban development project and verified there effectiveness.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.15 no.8
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• pp.3383-3389
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• 2014

Background: Prostate cancer is rapidly increasing in Korea and professional societies have requested adding prostate specific antigen (PSA) testing to the National Cancer Screening Program (NCSP), but this started a controversy in Korea and neutral evidence on this issue is required more than ever. The purpose of this study was to provide economic evidence to the decision makers of the NCSP. Materials and Methods: A cost-utility analysis was performed on the adoption of PSA screening program among men aged 50-74-years in Korea from the healthcare system perspective. Several data sources were used for the cost-utility analysis, including general health screening data, the Korea Central Cancer Registry, national insurance claims data, and cause of mortality from the National Statistical Office. To solicit the utility index of prostate cancer, a face-to-face interview for typical men aged 40 to 69 was conducted using a Time-Trade Off method. Results: As a result, the increase of effectiveness was estimated to be very low, when adopting PSA screening, and the incremental cost effectiveness ratio (ICER) was analyzed as about 94 million KRW. Sensitivity analyses were performed on the incidence rate, screening rate, cancer stage distribution, utility index, and treatment costs but the results were consistent with the base analysis. Conclusions: Under Korean circumstances with a relatively low incidence rate of prostate cancer, PSA screening is not cost-effective. Therefore, we conclude that adopting national prostate cancer screening would not be beneficial until further evidence is provided in the future.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers A
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• v.51 no.12
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• pp.597-602
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• 2002

The restructuring of power industry is still going on all over the world for last several decades. Many kinds of restructuring model have been studied, proposed, and applied. Among those models, power pool is more popular than other. This paper assumes the power pool market structure having competitive generation sector, and a new method is presented to build a bidding strategy in that market. The utilities participating in the market have the perfect information of their cost and price functions, but they don't know which strategy to be chosen by others. To define one's strategy as a vector, we make utility's cost/price functions into discrete step functions. An utility knows only his own strategy, so he estimates the other's cost/price functions into discrete step functions. An utility knows only his own strategy, so he estimates the other's strategy using Nash equilibrium or stochastic methods. And he also has to forecast the system demand. According to this forecasting result, his payoffs can be changed. Considering these all conditions, we formulate a bidding game problem and apply noncooperative game theory to that problem for the optimal strategy or solution. Some restrictive assumption are added for simplification of solving process. A numerical example is given in Case Study to show essential features and concrete results of this approach.