A Modular Architecture for Modelling Chronic Diseases with System Dynamics

According to the Statistics Austria more than one third of the Austrian population suffers from at least one chronic disease. Therefore efficient tools for the evaluation of the prevalence of these diseases and possible treatment and/or prevention strategies are needed. When simulating a chronic disease usually a model part for population dynamics, for the disease and also for costs is needed. Since there are on the one hand a lot of different diseases and on the other hand a lot of countries with different demography in which these diseases occur, a modular architecture of the simulation tool may be useful. This means that the model, in this case implemented in System Dynamics, consists of independent model parts that are connected to each other on specifically defined interfaces. The proposed approach allows exchange of model parts and guarantees a high degree of reusability. In this paper an example of such a modular architecture together with its advantages and disadvantages will be given for the chronic disease of obesity and for the population of Austria.