Life at Risk Evaluation for the Spinal Cord Injury Solutions Network

The Centre for Operations Excellence (COE) at the Sauder School of Business,University of British Columbia (UBC) was asked by the Spinal Cord Injury Solutions Network (SCISN) and The Rick Hansen Foundation to carry out an evaluation of a forecasting model. SCISN and The Rick Hansen Foundation commissioned the development of the model to a third party consulting firm. The resulting model builds on previous work simulating disease progression to provide forecasts of traumatic spinal cord injuries over the next 30 years, with the associated impacts on life expectancy and on the economy (both through health care costs and through secondary costs such as lost tax revenue). Although the model has the potential to be a powerful tool for policy makers, it has not been evaluated by an external agency. Such an evaluation is necessary if its results are to be used on a large scale. The model evaluation project aims to provide an objective independent evaluation of the forecasting model platform, as it applies to spinal cord injuries in Canada, with respect to the model’s utility for modeling the life and economic impacts of spinal cord injury medical/surgical intervention protocols.

Faculty Supervisor:

Dr. Derek Atkins

Student:

Rachel Lewis

Partner:

Spinal Cord Injury Solutions Network

Discipline:

Economics

Sector:

Life sciences

University:

University of British Columbia