IndiaSim project 

Itamar Megiddo led conceptualising and developing IndiaSim, collaborating with colleagues in the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy and experts in India. IndiaSim is an agent-based model of the Indian population and its utilization of the healthcare system, and it is designed to conduct economic evaluations of healthcare interventions and policies. Healthcare systems are complex adaptive systems, in which outcomes are not a linear combination of inputs.

To model this, IndiaSim uses a bottom up approach by drawing from household survey data to model at the individual level. The model has been used to analyse several applications, including introducing vaccines (eg a rotavirus vaccine) in India’s Universal Immunization Programme, universal public financing of epilepsy treatment, utilizing community healthcare workers to scale-up a program for home-based new born care, building water and sanitation infrastructure to reduce diarrheal diseases. We continue to use and extend the model for new applications.