Research Statement
“Good Health and Well-being” is the third of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the United Nations, and is aimed at “ensuring healthy lives and promoting the well-being for all at all ages”. Health economic research plays a critical role in the quest towards achieving this goal. Needs and challenges of building an efficient health care system are defined by various localised factors, like the geographic location, socio-economic status, environment, availability of resources, age-distribution of the population, etc. Acknowledging the limitations in the availability of essential resources, like health workers, capital, etc., health economic evaluation also aims at assessing economic sustainability of the health care techniques and policies. To be precise, the objective of health economic evaluation is derived from the need to provide affordable health care facilities to more and more people.
Health economics is a relatively new area of research and there is a dearth of such studies for the Indian population. In my Ph.D. work, I have developed new methodologies based on dynamic survival and epidemiological models for evaluating quality adjusted life years (QALY) and for carrying out cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) of medical and non-medical interventions [1-6]. To address various problems with the existing multi-state decision-analytic approach to CEA, I have presented an alternative method for calculating QALY without using the multi-state model framework [1, 2]. I have also proposed a new (proxy) utility function based on the estimated association parameter of the joint-modelling of survival and longitudinal data. The proposed methodology will be particularly useful for developing countries like India, or underdeveloped countries, where, because of the lack of standard procedures for CEA during clinical trials, standard utility values for different states of diseases are not available. Although some researchers use utility scores calculated for other countries for studies based in India, it is not advisable as the quality-of-life indicators may vary significantly from region to region depending upon socio-economic status and other factors. Further, in my thesis, I have developed a new compartmental epidemiological model, called the susceptible-infected (quarantined/ free)-recovered-deceased [SI(Q/F)RD] model to facilitate CEA of extensive random testing in comparison to targeted testing for containing COVID-19 [6]. This model is adopted into a Dirichlet-Beta state-space formulation to account for stochastic uncertainty [3, 4]. This flexible model allows to predict the transmission dynamics of epidemics like COVID-19 in the presence of time-varying proportion of undetected cases in the system. The proposed framework for CEA based on the state-space SI(Q/F)RD model can be extended to any non-medical and medical interventions for epidemics. Thus, my entire thesis has been aimed at developing statistical methodologies for providing essential and reliable predictions which can help the policy makers in taking informed and proactive decisions.
Apart from cost-effectiveness analysis, I intend to broaden my research scope by incorporating studies on evaluating cost-burden of various chronic and infectious diseases at community level [7]. Such studies will help to frame region-specific health care policies at community level, and will be aimed at optimizing health care resources to gain best possible health outcome. These studies will be invaluable towards the fight against community health burdens, like HIV/AIDS, cardio-vascular diseases, old-age related cognitive disorders, pollution related health disorders, and outbreak of any novel epidemic like COVID-19, among others.
I would also like to broaden my research spectrum by using Machine Learning techniques. In this direction, I am currently exploring and learning machine learning and neural network techniques. Recently, I successfully completed a 11-week online certification course on Machine Learning authorized by Stanford University and offered through Coursera. I would also be willing to engage in interdisciplinary work in the fields of Environment, Demography, and Public Health and Policy.
Prior to Ph.D., I have worked on applications of Econometric and Time-series models in behavioural finance- studying the presence of various kinds of seasonality in stock market returns [8-10]. I have also used time-series models, especially the concept of cointegration, in studying the association between economic and environmental parameters. I carried out this research work at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study (IIAS), Shimla, where I was invited for a month in the associateship programme of the Inter University Centre at IIAS. This study is just the initiation of my endeavour towards working in the field of environment and it has been recently published [11]. Further, I am planning to conduct comprehensive studies on the environmental sustainability of market liberalisation, hyper-consumerism, inequality in income distribution and market-driven current economic goals, among others, and to assess the expected achievements on shifting economic goals from a free ever-rising market-driven economy to a more sustainable and less skewed economy.
With my expertise in statistical modelling and computational techniques, and research endeavours in the fields of Biostatistics, Survival models, Stochastic Epidemiological models, and applied econometrics and time-series analysis, and my interdisciplinary research interest in Health, and Environment, I sincerely believe that I can contribute significantly towards the crucial needs of the society outlined in the SDGs.
I believe that the merit of a research work should be gauged in terms of its utility in achieving societal progress and not just in terms of its complexity. I would consider myself successful if my research can contribute towards the progress of the society.
Dr. Vishal Deo
References
1. Vishal Deo and Gurprit Grover (2022). “Estimating quality adjusted life years in the absence of standard utility values- A dynamic joint modelling approach”, Accepted in the journal Communications in Statistics - Simulation and Computation [Manuscript under production]
Preprint of the manuscript is available on medRxiv at the following DoI:
https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.05.24.20112102
Journal indexing- SCIE (Web of Science)
IF (2021)- 1.162
2. Vishal Deo and Gurprit Grover. (2019). “A New Approach to Evaluate Quality Adjusted Life Years Using Proxy Utility Function - An Application to HIV/ AIDS Data”, Journal of Communicable Diseases, 51(3), pp. 1-9. https://doi.org/10.24321/0019.5138.201919
Journal indexing- Scopus
Cite Score(2021)- 0.2
3. Vishal Deo and Gurprit Grover (2021). “A new extension of state-space SIR model to account for underreporting- An application to the COVID-19 transmission in California and Florida”, Results in Physics, special issue on epidemiological modelling, 24, 104182. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rinp.2021.104182
Journal indexing- SCIE (Web of Science) IF (2021)- 4.565
4. Vishal Deo, Anuradha R Chetiya, Barnali Deka and Gurprit Grover (2020). “Forecasting Transmission Dynamics of COVID-19 in India Under Containment Measures- A Time-Dependent State-Space SIR Approach”, Statistics and Applications, 18(1B), pp. 157- 180.
https://ssca.org.in/media/9_18_1_2020_Covid_Vishal_Deo.pdf
Journal indexing- ESCI (Web of Science), and UGC CARE LIST-I
Journal Citation Indicator (JCI)- 0.1
5. Gurprit Grover and Vishal Deo (2020). “Application of Parametric Survival and Multinomial Dirichlet Bayesian Models within Multi-state Setup for Cost Effectiveness Analysis of Two Alternative Chemotherapies for Chronic Lymphocytic Leukaemia Patients”, Statistics and Applications, 18(1), pp. 35-53.
https://ssca.org.in/media/3_Vol._18_No._1_2020_SA_Vishal_Deo_C.pdf
Journal indexing- ESCI (Web of Science), and UGC CARE LIST-I
Journal Citation Indicator (JCI)- 0.1
6. Conference Special Proceedings (under production): Vishal Deo and Gurprit Grover. (2022). “Method Based on State-Space Epidemiological Model for Cost-Effectiveness Analysis of Non-Medical Interventions- A Study on COVID-19 in California and Florida”, pp. 71-84. [Special proceedings of the 24th Annual Conference of the Society of Statistics, Computer and Applications, RASTA-2022, during 23-27 February 2022, organised by ICAR-NAARM, Hyderabad]
Author Type: First and Corresponding, ISBN No.- 978-81-950383-1-2.
7. Gurprit Grover, Sangeeta Chakravarty, Sanya Aggarwal and Vishal Deo (2021). “Estimating Disability Adjusted Life Years using Survival Models in HIV/ AIDS Risk Groups”, Journal of Communicable Diseases, 53(4), 36-47. https://doi.org/10.24321/0019.5138.202172
Journal indexing- Scopus
Cite Score(2021)- 0.2
8. Anvita Sharma and Vishal Deo. (2014). “Seasonal Anomalies in Indian Stock Markets”, International Research Journal of Finance and Economics, Issue No. 118, No. 6, pp. 74-101.
Peer Reviewed (Earlier indexed in Scopus but now discontinued)
9. Vishal Deo and Anvita Sharma. (2014). “Investigating the Possibilities of Cointegration between Major Stock Indices of BRIC Nations and also between those of India, USA and UK”, International Journal of Statistics and Systems, Volume 9, No. 1, pp. 19-31. https://www.ripublication.com/Volume/ijssv9n1.htm
Peer Reviewed
10. Vishal Deo. (2014) “Investigating Cointegration between Some Indian Stock Indices”, International Journal of Scientific and Engineering Research, Vol. 5, Issue 1, pp. 1869- 1873. https://www.ijser.org/onlineResearchPaperViewer.aspx?Investigating-Cointegration-between-Some-Indian-Stock-Indices.pdf
Peer Reviewed
11. Vishal Deo (2022). “Association Between Economic and Environmental Parameters in Globalised India”, International Journal of Agricultural and Statistical Sciences, 18(1), 35- 46.
https://connectjournals.com/03899.2022.18.35
Journal indexing- Scopus
Cite Score(2021)- 1.2
12. Vishal Deo and Anvita Sharma. (2014). “Investigating the Possibilities of Cointegration between Major Stock Indices of BRIC Nations and also between those of India, USA and UK”, International Journal of Statistics and Systems, Volume 9, No. 1, pp. 19-31. https://www.ripublication.com/Volume/ijssv9n1.htm
Peer Reviewed
13. Vishal Deo. (2014) “Investigating Cointegration between Some Indian Stock Indices”, International Journal of Scientific and Engineering Research, Vol. 5, Issue 1, pp. 1869- 1873. https://www.ijser.org/onlineResearchPaperViewer.aspx?Investigating-Cointegration-between-Some-Indian-Stock-Indices.pdf
Peer Reviewed