Using XML-coded Markov models to build a framework for cost-benefit analysis in cardiology

Cost-effectiveness analysis becomes an important tool for providers and payers in establishing new therapeutic options for patients. Despite a huge amount of published information on evidence based data on cost-effectiveness is available over medical databases (e.g. MedLine) there is a huge time gap in "time to provider" and "time to payer" of this information. Objective of our work was to design a concept and data structure for easy and semi-automated set up of cost-effectiveness Markov models for rhythmologic topics and evaluate those with a portion of available literature.