Toward Understanding the Interplay between Public and Private Healthcare Providers and Patients: An Agent-based Simulation Approach

Abstract

Few modelling studies have been carried out to investigate patients' involvement in the decision-making process in a healthcare system. Here we perform theoretical and simulation analysis of a healthcare business model involving three populations: Public Healthcare Providers, Private Healthcare Providers and Patients. The analysis contributes to healthcare economic modelling by analyzing the dynamics and emergence of cooperative behavior of agents within the three populations. Resorting to agent-based simulations, we examine the effect of increasing behavioural mutation and providers' capacity on patients' cooperative behaviour. We show that the former introduces more randomness in agents' behaviors enabling cooperation to emerge in more difficult conditions. Moreover, when the providers' capacity to meet patients' demand is limited, patients exhibit low levels of cooperation, implying a more difficult cooperation dilemma in a healthcare system that needs addressing.

Behavioral decision-making of government, agricultural product producers, and consumers on agricultural product quality and safety regulation in a digital environment

“…For example, in environmental monitoring, Encarnação et al ( 30 ) develop a new framework based on evolutionary game theory, envisioning that the state, business and civil sectors are faced with the dilemma of deciding between maintaining the status quo or shifting to a new paradigm, and the results show that public intervention is essential for shifting to a new paradigm, and that synergies between the private and civil sector are an important step in supporting the paradigm shift. In Healthcare Investing, Alalawi et al ( 31 ) provide a theoretical and simulation analysis of healthcare business models involving Public Healthcare Providers, Private Healthcare Providers and Patients, contributing to the modeling of the healthcare economy by analyzing the dynamics of agents and the emergence of collaborative behaviors in the three populations. Bova et al ( 32 ) use evolutionary game models to explore the role governments can play in building regulatory markets for AI systems to prevent reckless behavior.…”

Does government policy matter in the digital transformation of farmers’ cooperatives?—A tripartite evolutionary game analysis

“…For example, in the field of social governance, Encarnação et al (2016) constructed a tripartite game model involving the civil sector, state sector, and business sector, providing a new research approach for promoting societal paradigm shifts. In the field of medical investment, Alalawi and Zeng (2020) developed a tripartite game model involving public healthcare providers, private healthcare providers and patients, offering new solutions to cooperation dilemmas in healthcare systems. In the field of safety technology regulation, scholars have used multi-agent evolutionary game theory to explore various aspects of AI technology regulation, making significant contributions to the research on the normative development of AI technology (Alalawi et al, 2024;Bova et al, 2024).…”