Microsimulation Modelling and Data Analysis Division

The Microsimulation Modelling and Data Analysis Division (MSDAD) is situated in the Applied Research and Analysis Directorate (ARAD) of Health Canada. ARAD, and hence MSDAD, were created in 1999 to enhance the evidence base for policy development and decision making within Health Canada. Our particular contribution is to provide data analysis, database construction, and modelling expertise to a enable a greater more quantitative dimension to policy analysis.

MSDAD Mission Statement

MSDAD is dedicated to providing evidence for policy making by building and exploiting comprehensive databases and microsimulation models to explore options for better health care in Canada.

MSDAD's main client is the Health Policy Branch, although interest in our work has been expressed by academic researchers and provincial policy makers.

Our Work Themes

To date, much of our focus has been on Health Human Resources (HHR) and Pharmacare issues, in building databases and related macro and microsimulation models, as well as contributing to other emerging policy issues. MSDAD has completed a physician supply/demand model. This forecasting tool has garnered a lot of interest in the provinces. Another major model, Pharmasim, quantifies the impact of changes to provincial pharmacare programs on households and government expenditures. A third major modelling achievement is our Health-Tax Microsimulation Model (HTSIM). HTSIM enables us to quantify the impact of changes to tax measures in support of the health agenda. The overlap of ARAD expertise and Branch research agendas recentlyidentified three additional areas of research for MSDAD:

• Innovative and Transformative Technologies
  - Research projects relating to accelerating the development and diffusion of health technologies while respecting the need for cost-effectiveness.
• Healthy Communities
  - Research projects relating to the socio-economic, demographic and environmental determinants of health in Canadian communities;
  - Microsimulation modelling of policy parameters that influence determinants of health in a Geographic Information Systems context.
• FNIH Sustainability
  - On-reserve nursing demand and supply;
  - First-Nations Non-Insured Health Benefits (NIHB) costs.
  

These new research areas represent a refocusing of our research capacity. At the same time, existing commitments in the areas of HHR modelling and Pharmasim will be respected.

Data Sources and Databases

In building our health policy models, MSDAD must identify, secure, and prepare a number of databases. Some of the data is not readily accessible; gathering it takes time and entails nurturing cooperative relationships with the data holders. To make comprehensive databases from diverse sources, MSDAD analysts statistically merge and impute diverse databases. The resulting comprehensive databases enable us to see and tell a more complete story and to undertake more efficacious analysis. For example, for the HTSIM and Pharmasim database, we merged records from the Survey of Household Spending (SHS) and Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID), and imputed taxation data from Canada Revenue Agency CRA) and data on drug plan premiums from the National Population Health Survey.