Published In

Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Simulation and Modeling Methodologies, Technologies and Applications (SIMULTECH-2012)

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2012

Subjects

Pain medicine, Prescription Drug Misuse -- Prevention and control

Abstract

The objective of the study was to develop a system dynamics model of the medical use of pharmaceutical opioids, and the associated diversion and nonmedical use of these drugs. The model was used to test the impact of simulated interventions in this complex system. The study relied on secondary data obtained from the literature and from other public sources for the period 1995 to 2008. In addition, an expert panel provided recommendations regarding model parameters and model structure. The behaviour of the resulting systems-level model compared favourably with reference behaviour data (R2=.95). After the base model was tested, logic to simulate interventions was added and the impact on overdose deaths was evaluated over a seven-year period, 2008-2015. Principal findings were that the introduction of a tamper resistant formulation unexpectedly increased total overdose deaths. This was due to increased prescribing which counteracted the drop in the death rate. We conclude that it is important to choose metrics carefully, and that the system dynamics modelling approach can help to evaluate interventions intended to ameliorate the adverse outcomes in the complex system associated with treating pain via opioids.

DOI

10.5220/0004062103970408

Persistent Identifier

https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/42841

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