
152 Discrete Event Simulation for Health Technology Assessment
For a given replication of the model, the patients listed in SourcePatients will
be sampled and their data will be assigned to the corresponding attributes of
the entities that are created at the start of the simulation. To do this, a method
of random sampling with replacement is required. This is easily implemented
by drawing random numbers, one for each entity, and using them to select a
patient from the clinical trial. Random number generators yield numerals from
the set of real numbers, typically ranging from 0 to 1 (including 0but not 1).
This generator can be called in Microsoft ...