BackgroundThe objective was to explore the current advances and extent of DES (Discrete Event Simulation) applied to assisting with health decision making, as well as to categorize the wide spectrum of health-related topics where DES was applied.MethodsA systematic review was conducted of the literature published over the last two decades. Original research articles were included and reviewed if they concentrated on the topic of DES technique applied to health care management with model frameworks explicitly demonstrated. No restriction regarding the settings of DES application was applied.ResultsA total of 211 papers met the predefined inclusion criteria. The number of publications included increased significantly especially after 2010.101 papers (48%) stated explicitly disease areas targeted, the most frequently modeled of which are related to circulatory system, nervous system and Neoplasm. The DES applications were distributed unevenly into 4 major classes: health and care systems operation (HCSO) (65%), disease progression modeling (DPM) (28%), screening modeling (SM) (5%) and health behavior modeling (HBM) (2%). More than 68% of HCSO by DES were focused on specific problems in individual units. However, more attempts at modeling highly integrated health service systems as well as some new trends were identified.ConclusionsDES technique has been an effective tool to approach a wide variety of health care issues. Among all DES applications in health care, health system operations research occupied the most considerable proportion and increased most significantly. Health Economic Evaluation (HEE) was the second most common topic for DES in health care, but with stable rather than increasing numbers of publications.

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The aims of this study were to formulate a generic reporting checklist for healthcare-related discrete event simulation (DES) studies and to critically appraise the existing studies.Methods: Based on the principles of accessibility and generality, assessment items were derived from the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR)-Society for Medical Decision Making (SMDM) Task Force reports. The resulting checklist was applied to all 211 DES studies identified in a previous review. The proportion of fulfilled checklist items served as an indicator of reporting quality. A logistic regression was conducted to investigate whether study characteristics (eg, publication before or after the publication of the ISPOR-SMDM reports) increased the likelihood of fulfilling more than the mean number of items fulfilled by the appraised DES studies.Results: An 18-item checklist was formulated covering model conceptualization, parameterization and uncertainty assessment, validation, generalizability, and stakeholder involvement. The reporting quality of the DES models fluctuated around the mean of 63.7% (SD 11.0%) over the period studied. A modest nonsignificant improvement in reporting quality was found after the publication of the ISPOR-SMDM reports (64.5% vs 62.9%). Items with the lowest performance were related to predictive validation (2.8% of studies), cross validation (8.5%), face validity assessment (26.5%), and stakeholder involvement (27.5%). Models applied to health economic evaluation (HEE), country under study, and industry sponsorship were significantly associated with the odds of achieving above-average reporting quality. Conclusions:The checklist is applicable across various model-based analyses beyond HEEs. Adherence to the ISPOR-SMDM guidelines should be improved, particularly regarding model validation.

The cultural translation view considers translation as a cross-cultural communication activity. The paradigm and thinking of translation will also have profound changes in different cultural contexts. It can be seen from modern translation studies that the translation circle has paid full attention to the cultural differences between the two languages, and due to the profound influence of culture, translators have gradually formed their own unique and personalized cultural understanding and translation concepts in translation practice. Starting from the influence of cultural context on Chinese-English translation, this article explores the cultural context in Chinese-English translation combined with practical work experience, and the understanding and practice of translation activities under the cultural translation perspective.