MISCAN

MISCAN simulates population-level screening scenarios for breast, cervical, and colorectal cancer (CRC) to project impacts on cancer incidence, mortality, and screening-related harms and benefits.

Key Features:

• Scenario Simulation: Simulates current and alternative screening protocols, including variations in target age ranges and screening attendance rates.
• Quantification of Outcomes: Produces estimates of future benefits and harms of screening and scales results to country-specific populations.
• Customizable Inputs: Accepts country-specific demographic, epidemiological, and existing screening program parameters to tailor projections.
• Cancer Sites Modeled: Applies to breast, cervical, and colorectal cancer screening scenarios.
• Screening Modalities Modeled: Includes modeling of fecal immunochemical testing (FIT) and colonoscopy screening strategies as demonstrated in colorectal screening evaluations.

Scientific Applications:

• Policy Decision Support: Informs public health and screening policy by projecting benefits, harms, and resource implications of alternative screening strategies.
• Comparative Evaluation: Enables comparison of screening strategies (for example, biennial FIT versus colonoscopy every ten years) and assessment of their impacts on incidence, mortality, and service demand.
• Long-term Projections: Generates extended-period projections of screening outcomes (example application evaluated outcomes from 2018 to 2050).

Methodology:

Uses microsimulation via the Microsimulation Screening Analysis (MISCAN) model to project long-term impacts on cancer incidence and mortality across screening scenarios using country-specific demographic, epidemiological, and screening program data, with results scaled to the target population.