[Disease modelling in diabetes mellitus].

Disease modelling increasingly plays an important role in planning and implementing medical decision making in diabetes care. For a general practitioner it is difficult to find access to application, benefit, arithmetic background and quality criteria of modelling. This review provides a comprehensive overview about the current methods in disease modelling in order to access quality criteria for disease modelling and modelling studies in diabetes care. The following criteria are essential for good quality in disease modelling: adequate choice of data sources, assessment of medical and economic data according to criteria of evidence-based medicine, reasonable time horizons, realistic use of discounting and inflation rates, representative target populations and a realistic perspective of the cost-benefit analysis. Furthermore, validation of disease models and the adequate use of those instruments are of importance.