ECE seminar: Operations Research and Data Analytics to Support Public Health Policy Makers for Fighting Cervical Cancer Epidemics

This talk describes an ambitious multi-disciplinary on-going research project focusing on cervical cancer (CC). Its objective is to design and implement a data-driven computational tool for assisting decision-makers in shaping national public health policies. To this aim, we are employing and integrating into a coherent framework with multiple operation research approaches, which are fed by assimilated data on country-specific population dynamics, HPV infection epidemics, progression from pre-cancerous lesions to CC, efficacy of vaccination and the specificity and sensitivity of screening examinations. The framework allows comparing the predicted cost-effectivity of public health policies, taking into consideration the expected costs and savings for the health system and citizens. Furthermore, it allows formulating and solving the optimization problem of maximizing the cost-effectivity of public health policies, taking into consideration limits on budget and public health goals, to provide decision-makers with a view of feasible and effective interventions roadmaps.