BCoDE

BCoDE calculates Disability-Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) for communicable diseases and healthcare-associated infections to quantify health burden in European Union and European Economic Area Member States.

Key Features:

• Comprehensive Disease Coverage: Supports calculations for 32 communicable diseases and six healthcare-associated infections and accepts age group- and sex-specific case data.
• Disease Progression Models (Outcome Trees): Employs disease progression models or outcome trees developed following extensive literature reviews to simulate pathways of disease progression.
• Monte Carlo Simulations: Runs Monte Carlo simulations on input parameters to account for variability and generate 95% uncertainty intervals for model outputs.
• Comparative DALY Analysis: Enables comparison of DALYs across multiple disease models to evaluate relative health burdens.
• Output Metrics: Produces mean and median overall DALYs, DALYs per 100,000 population, and distinctions between mortality-related and disability-related DALYs.

Scientific Applications:

• Burden Quantification: Quantifies disease burden using DALY metrics for communicable diseases and healthcare-associated infections within EU/EEA populations.
• Epidemiological Comparison: Supports epidemiological studies that evaluate and compare the impact of communicable diseases across demographics and regions.
• Public Health Decision Support: Informs public health prioritization and decision-making by providing standardized, comparable burden estimates for stakeholders and policymakers.

Methodology:

Age- and sex-specific case data are integrated into disease progression models (outcome trees) developed from literature reviews; Monte Carlo simulations are applied to input parameters to account for uncertainty and produce 95% uncertainty intervals; DALYs are calculated with outputs including mean, median, DALYs per 100,000, and separation of mortality-related and disability-related DALYs.