A study of pre-decision evaluation using influence diagram: an estimation of the benefits of influenza vaccination.

The purpose of this study is to develop a decision analysis model based on the influence diagram and estimate the benefits receiving of influenza vaccination. We collected more than 300,000 samples of elders aged over 65 years in Taiwan and then analyzed the health expenditure of the elders with and without influenza vaccination. We incorporate clinical results and the knowledge of physicians by an influence diagram. We divided our samples into four different age groups and the results showed that the total healthcare expenses for receiving influenza vaccination are more than the expenses for not receiving influenza vaccination for all age groups, we found there is a trend that the difference decreases if the age is older. We performed the one-way sensitivity analysis and Monde Carlo sensitivity analysis further and the results showed that the expected health expenditure is mostly sensitive to the hospitalization under the different condition.