Atherosclerosis: The cost of illness in Portugal.

INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVES: Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in Portugal and atherosclerosis is the most common underlying pathophysiological process. The aim of this study was to quantify the economic impact of atherosclerosis in Portugal by estimating disease-related costs. METHODS: Costs were estimated based on a prevalence approach and following a societal perspective. Three national epidemiological sources were used to estimate the prevalence of the main clinical manifestations of atherosclerosis. The annual costs of atherosclerosis included both direct costs (resource consumption) and indirect costs (impact on population productivity). These costs were estimated for 2016, based on data from the Hospital Morbidity Database, the health care database (SIARS) of the Regional Health Administration of Lisbon and Tagus Valley including real-world data from primary care, the 2014 National Health Interview Survey, and expert opinion. RESULTS: The total cost of atherosclerosis in 2016 reached 1.9 billion euros (58% and 42% of which was direct and indirect costs, respectively). Most of the direct costs were associated with primary care (55%), followed by hospital outpatient care (27%) and hospitalizations (18%). Indirect costs were mainly driven by early exit from the labor force (91%). CONCLUSIONS: Atherosclerosis has a major economic impact, being responsible for health expenditure equivalent to 1% of Portuguese gross domestic product and 11% of current health expenditure in 2016.

Rtabnetsp: an R package for retrieving São Paulo State health status indicators, Brazil. / Rtabnetsp: pacote R para extração de indicadores de saúde do estado de São Paulo.

Health status indicators are an important tool for monitoring the performance of public health actions, identifying trends and priority regions for resource allocation. An R package was developed in order to increase the feasibility of handling and analyzing health status indicator data. The rtabnetsp package requests data from TabNet servers on the São Paulo State Department of Health website, retrieving and preprocessing the data for user manipulation. This article presents the rtabnetsp package and its functions, installation and use; as well as providing examples of its functionalities, which involve listing and searching among available indicators, selecting desired content and obtaining data aggregated according to regionalization level held on the data matrix, enabling greater agility in tasks regarding public health management in the state of São Paulo.

Indicadores de saúde representam uma importante ferramenta de acompanhamento de desempenho de ações em Saúde Pública, permitindo a avaliação de intervenções realizadas, bem como a identificação de tendências e regiões prioritárias para alocação de recursos. Com o objetivo de aumentar a praticidade nas tarefas de análise e manipulação de dados desses indicadores, foi criado um pacote R. O pacote rtabnetsp realiza requisições aos servidores TabNet da página eletrônica da Secretaria de Estado da Saúde de São Paulo, recuperando e tratando tais dados para utilização do usuário. Este artigo apresenta o pacote rtabnetsp e suas funções, modo de instalação e uso; traz também exemplos de suas funcionalidades, que permitem a visualização, busca e seleção, entre uma lista de indicadores, do conteúdo desejado, além da obtenção dos dados agregados pelo nível de regionalização disponível na matriz de dados, conferindo maior agilidade a tarefas de gestão em saúde do estado de São Paulo.

Indicadores de salud son una herramienta importante para monitorear el desempeño de las acciones de salud pública, permitiendo la evaluación de las intervenciones hechas, así como la identificación de tendencias y regiones prioritarias para la asignación de recursos. En la búsqueda de aumentar la practicidad en las tareas de análisis y manipulación de datos de estos indicadores, se creó un paquete R. El paquete rtabnetsp realiza solicitudes a los servidores TabNet del Departamento de Salud del Estado de São Paulo, recogiendo y procesando dichos datos para el usuario. Este artículo presenta el paquete, sus funciones, instalación y uso, así como ejemplos de sus funcionalidades, que permiten visualizar y buscar desde un listado de indicadores, seleccionar el contenido deseado y obtener los datos agregados por el nivel de regionalización disponible en la matriz de datos, alcanzando más agilidad en las tareas de gestión de la salud en el estado de São Paulo.

Rtabnetsp: pacote R para extração de indicadores de saúde do estado de São Paulo / Rtabnetsp: paquete R para extracción de indicadores de salud del estado de São Paulo, Brasil / Rtabnetsp: an R package for retrieving São Paulo State health status indicators, Brazil

Indicadores de saúde representam uma importante ferramenta de acompanhamento de desempenho de ações em Saúde Pública, permitindo a avaliação de intervenções realizadas, bem como a identificação de tendências e regiões prioritárias para alocação de recursos. Com o objetivo de aumentar a praticidade nas tarefas de análise e manipulação de dados desses indicadores, foi criado um pacote R. O pacote rtabnetsp realiza requisições aos servidores TabNet da página eletrônica da Secretaria de Estado da Saúde de São Paulo, recuperando e tratando tais dados para utilização do usuário. Este artigo apresenta o pacote rtabnetsp e suas funções, modo de instalação e uso; traz também exemplos de suas funcionalidades, que permitem a visualização, busca e seleção, entre uma lista de indicadores, do conteúdo desejado, além da obtenção dos dados agregados pelo nível de regionalização disponível na matriz de dados, conferindo maior agilidade a tarefas de gestão em saúde do estado de São Paulo.

Indicadores de salud son una herramienta importante para monitorear el desempeño de las acciones de salud pública, permitiendo la evaluación de las intervenciones hechas, así como la identificación de tendencias y regiones prioritarias para la asignación de recursos. En la búsqueda de aumentar la practicidad en las tareas de análisis y manipulación de datos de estos indicadores, se creó un paquete R. El paquete rtabnetsp realiza solicitudes a los servidores TabNet del Departamento de Salud del Estado de São Paulo, recogiendo y procesando dichos datos para el usuario. Este artículo presenta el paquete, sus funciones, instalación y uso, así como ejemplos de sus funcionalidades, que permiten visualizar y buscar desde un listado de indicadores, seleccionar el contenido deseado y obtener los datos agregados por el nivel de regionalización disponible en la matriz de datos, alcanzando más agilidad en las tareas de gestión de la salud en el estado de São Paulo.

Health status indicators are an important tool for monitoring the performance of public health actions, identifying trends and priority regions for resource allocation. An R package was developed in order to increase the feasibility of handling and analyzing health status indicator data. The rtabnetsp package requests data from TabNet servers on the São Paulo State Department of Health website, retrieving and preprocessing the data for user manipulation. This article presents the rtabnetsp package and its functions, installation and use; as well as providing examples of its functionalities, which involve listing and searching among available indicators, selecting desired content and obtaining data aggregated according to regionalization level held on the data matrix, enabling greater agility in tasks regarding public health management in the state of São Paulo.

Economia do setor público: uma análise do programa mais médicos / Public sector economics: an analysis of the mais médicos program

Este trabalho tem como objetivo analisar o Programa Mais Médicos - PMM e suas relações com as falhas de mercado e falhas de governo no setor de saúde brasileiro. Para tanto, se configurou como um estudo de caso de natureza qualitativa. Inicialmente, apresenta-se uma contextualização da saúde pública no Brasil, desde o século XIX até o final do século XX, destacando o papel do governo, do mercado e da sociedade civil no setor de saúde, bem como a criação do Sistema Único de Saúde SUS. Na sequência, discorre-se um breve referencial teórico. Foi utilizada como estratégia metodológica a revisão bibliográfica, recorrendo à livros e artigos pesquisados na Biblioteca Virtual de Saúde e Scielo. A discussão demonstrou características e situações, atinentes ao PMM, relativas às falhas de mercado, no que concerne à incerteza, risco moral, externalidades, assimetria de informação e barreiras. Por fim, o estudo concluiu que, a despeito dos esforços implementados no âmbito do SUS, uma possível dependência de trajetória à iniciativa privada na saúde, parece atrair, com mais efetividade, o profissional médico para o exercício profissional. Sugere-se o desenvolvimento de estudos futuros mais específicos quanto à distribuição dos médicos nas localidades e seus impactos nas condições de saúde da população.

This paper aims to analyze The Mais Médicos (More Doctors) Program – PMM and its relationships with market and government failures in the health sector in Brazil. For this, it is configured as a qualitative nature case study. Initially, it is presented a contextualization of public health in Brazil, from the nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth century, highlighting the role of government, the market and civil society in the health sector as well as the creation of Brazil's Public Health System, the SUS - Sistema Único de Sáude (Unified Health System). A brief theoretical reference was made. It was used as methodological strategy a bibliographic review, reporting to books and papers searched on Biblioteca Virtual de Saúde and Scielo. The discussion showed characteristics and situations, connected to the PMM, related to market failures, regarding uncertainty, moral hazard, externalities, information asymmetry and barriers. Finally, the study concludes that, despite the efforts implemented within the scope of the SUS, a possible path dependence on private initiative in health sector seems to attract, more effectively, the doctors for the professional exercise. It is suggested the development of more specific studies on doctors distribution according to the locations and their impact on population health conditions.

Multi-parametric prediction for cardiovascular risk assessment.

The employment of personal health systems (pHealth) is a valuable concept in the management of chronic diseases, particularly in the context of cardiovascular diseases. By means of a continuous monitoring of the patient it is possible to seamless access multiple sources of data, including physiological signals, providing professionals with a global and reliable view of the patient's status. In practice, it is possible the prompt diagnosis of events, the early prediction of critical events and the implementation of personalized therapies. Furthermore, the information collected during long periods creates new opportunities in the diagnosis of a disease, in its evolution, and in the prediction of possible complications. The focus of this work is the research and implementation of multi-parametric algorithms for data analysis in pHealth context, including data mining techniques as well as physiological signal modelling and processing. In particular, fusion strategies for cardiovascular status evaluation (namely cardiovascular risk assessment and cardiac function estimation) and multi-parametric prediction algorithms for the early detection of cardiovascular events (such as hypertension, syncope and heart failure decompensation) will be addressed.

New approaches for improving cardiovascular risk assessment.

INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVES: Clinical guidelines recommend the use of cardiovascular risk assessment tools (risk scores) to predict the risk of events such as cardiovascular death, since these scores can aid clinical decision-making and thereby reduce the social and economic costs of cardiovascular disease (CVD). However, despite their importance, risk scores present important weaknesses that can diminish their reliability in clinical contexts. This study presents a new framework, based on current risk assessment tools, that aims to minimize these limitations. METHODS: Appropriate application and combination of existing knowledge is the main focus of this work. Two different methodologies are applied: (i) a combination scheme that enables data to be extracted and processed from various sources of information, including current risk assessment tools and the contributions of the physician; and (ii) a personalization scheme based on the creation of patient groups with the purpose of identifying the most suitable risk assessment tool to assess the risk of a specific patient. RESULTS: Validation was performed based on a real patient dataset of 460 patients at Santa Cruz Hospital, Lisbon, Portugal, diagnosed with non-ST-segment elevation acute coronary syndrome. Promising results were obtained with both approaches, which achieved sensitivity, specificity and geometric mean of 78.79%, 73.07% and 75.87%, and 75.69%, 69.79% and 72.71%, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: The proposed approaches present better performances than current CVD risk scores; however, additional datasets are required to back up these findings.

Personalization Based on Grouping Strategies for Short-Term Cardiovascular Event Risk Assessment.

Cardiovascular diseases are the main cause of death in Europe, representing 47% of all deaths. This could be avoided, if each patient underwent the most adequate treatment. For this to happen, it is important to determine the patient's risk of having a cardiovascular event. This is known as risk assessment, and can be done using risk scores. However, there are several risk scores with similar performances, which makes it difficult to choose the most adequate one. We propose to overcome this by combining risk scores using personalization based on groups, where new patients are assigned to the most similar group and consequently to the most adequate risk score. This eliminates the need to choose a specific tool, and improves the overall performance (when compared with the performance of individual tools). This strategy was validated using the Santa Cruz Dataset. The results obtained were able to maintain the highest sensitivity while improving the specificity in 13% when compared with the highest values achieved by the selected individual risk scores (GRACE, TIMI, PURSUIT).

Cost-effectiveness of rivaroxaban for stroke prevention in atrial fibrillation in the Portuguese setting.

INTRODUCTION AND AIMS: To project the long-term cost-effectiveness of treating non-valvular atrial fibrillation (AF) patients for stroke prevention with rivaroxaban compared to warfarin in Portugal. METHODS: A Markov model was used that included health and treatment states describing the management and consequences of AF and its treatment. The model's time horizon was set at a patient's lifetime and each cycle at three months. The analysis was conducted from a societal perspective and a 5% discount rate was applied to both costs and outcomes. Treatment effect data were obtained from the pivotal phase III ROCKET AF trial. The model was also populated with utility values obtained from the literature and with cost data derived from official Portuguese sources. The outcomes of the model included life-years, quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs), incremental costs, and associated incremental cost-effectiveness ratios (ICERs). Extensive sensitivity analyses were undertaken to further assess the findings of the model. As there is evidence indicating underuse and underprescription of warfarin in Portugal, an additional analysis was performed using a mixed comparator composed of no treatment, aspirin, and warfarin, which better reflects real-world prescribing in Portugal. RESULTS: This cost-effectiveness analysis produced an ICER of €3895/QALY for the base-case analysis (vs. warfarin) and of €6697/QALY for the real-world prescribing analysis (vs. mixed comparator). The findings were robust when tested in sensitivity analyses. CONCLUSION: The results showed that rivaroxaban may be a cost-effective alternative compared with warfarin or real-world prescribing in Portugal.

Vigilância sanitária em transformação / Ongoing sanitary surveillance in transformation in the State of Goiás, Brazil

Para acompanhar as mudanças em curso no sistema de saúde, a Superintendência de Vigilância de Goiás vem realizando um conjunto de ações que objetivam atender as exigências de uma sociedade cada vez mais bem informada e participativa. Nesse sentido, a Superintendência de Vigilância Sanitária trabalha para aperfeiçoar seus recursos, investindo prioritariamente na reformulação do conceito de gestão em saúde. Nessa perspectiva, é dada especial atenção à qualificação dos seus profissionais, à coordenação dos sistemas municipais de vigilância sanitária, ao monitoramento da qualidade dos produtos e serviços, e a divulgação e execução de programas e projetos