Modelling for Insight: The Case of Dementia in Singapore

Many nations have rapidly ageing populations and consequently face important health care policy issues, including a need to address the care and treatment of individuals afflicted with ageing-related dementia. To help inform policymakers in Singapore concerned with dementia, we constructed a system dynamics model that represents changing population characteristics, incidence and prevalence of dementia, and a population-level natural history of this pernicious condition. In the model-building process, we encountered an unexpected simulation outcome that led to valuable insights. This article (i) describes how a difference between measured census data and the simulated population led to improvements in our population modelling, (ii) introduces a novel and generalizable means to simulate how the prevalence of mild, moderate, and severe dementia is likely to change over the next 20 years, and (iii) provides a comparison between two means of prevalence projection. Copyright (c) 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.