Mechanisms for Integrating Real Data into Search Game Simulations: An Application to Winter Health Service Pressures and Preventative Policies

While modelling and simulation are powerful techniques for exploring complex phenomena, if they are not coupled with suitable real-world data any results obtained are likely to require extensive validation. We consider this problem in the context of search game modelling, and suggest that both demographic and behaviour data are used to configure certain model parameters. We show this integration in practice by using a combined dataset of over 150,000 individuals to configure a specific search game model that captures the environment, population, interventions and individual behaviours relating to winter health service pressures. The presence of this data enables us to more accurately explore the potential impact of service pressure interventions, which we do across 33,000 simulations using a computational version of the model. We find government advice to be the best-performing intervention in simulation, in respect of improved health, reduced health inequalities, and thus reduced pressure on health service utilisation.