European Journal of ePractice

Computer-based decision support in health care with the application of simulation methods is receiving attention at European level as the indisputable advantages of these methods are getting widely recognized. Managerial and policy decision support however, have still to find their way into the forefront of the European developments. Relevant attempts remain fragmented and introvert, resulting in reportedly slow adoption rates by real practice.
This paper draws upon a framework of two interlinked practical cases, one from the private and one from the public sector, to portray its message. The first case follows a typical approach, where mainstream methodology and traditional implementation hinders the realization of a wider value proposition. The multidisciplinary collaborative approach of the second case responds to these identified limitations and is used to demonstrate the 'openness' of such tools and the array of potential results that can be achieved.
Inspired by the Virtual Physiological Human research objective, we extended this practical set of cases to a wider framework for collaborative and multidisciplinary multi-scale decision support. This framework aims to spark new directions in line with the EU ehealth agenda to better target and assist health authorities and managers.
The paper identifies lack of simulated-mass and simulation interconnectivity as a significant and underemphasized adoption barrier and recommends practitioners to turn to 'open' interoperable models as a mean to address the systemic complexity of high level decisions and to add sustainability to their work.