In this post, I talked about some challenges of using decision analysis in medicine. This week, I will list a few potential benefits.

Transparency

Decision analysis is transparent. We see exactly what probabilities and rewards were assigned to each outcome.

Documentation

For a patient who wants to record why they chose a certain treatment, or a provider who wants to show that they did their due diligence, a decision analysis shows that every box has been checked.

Research

A decision analysis tells us what we need to know. For example, the decision analysis might tell us that we need to know the joint distribution of the treatment, outcome, and side effect. This steers us to conduct research to estimate this quantity.