Question

Discuss how probabilistic decision making might be useful in a health care setting, and the types of information it could provide.

Answer 1

Let's see an example first. As covid19 is the latest topic in the healthcare and medical field, so let's discuss it.

Suppose a country claims that they found a vaccine for covid19, then it will not be available for public use till it is tested by experts making sure it prevents covid19 in the body and does not have any other side effects too. How it's done? Should be tested on all the humans on earth? Or just test on one person, if he is cured then the vaccine should be available for public use?

The answer of these questions lies in probabilistic decision making.

Experts will take some volunteers like a few hundred or maybe some biological samples which behave against covid19 like humans and test the vaccine on them. Then they observe the results, do some statistical calculations, like t-tests, ANOVA, etc. and come to the conclusion that the vaccine is effective or how effective it is. Also, they will look at other factors like blood pressure, body temperature, or maybe hormone levels, etc. which are helpful in telling that it has no or fewer side effects.

Now coming to probability decision making, how it is useful.

Probabilistic decision making involves data collection, framing a model for a problem, and analyzing to get to an outcome. They are helpful in health care settings to study different medicines, vaccines, medical machines, and methods to estimate their effects. It could provide about how a drug is resistive, beneficial, estimation of people to be infected by a virus or plague, a particular treatment is long-term or short-term etc.