5 Things to Look for at the Upcoming ISPOR Annual Meeting

Value, cost, and the patient are taking center stage during the ISPOR 21st Annual International Meeting, which is being held May 21-25, 2016, in Washington, DC.

During the 5-day meeting, attendees will hear from experts around the world on a myriad of topics, including: patient-reported outcomes, value frameworks, cost effectiveness, digital technology, and more. The first 2 days of the meeting are dedicated to pre-meeting short courses with the first of 3 plenary sessions, issue sessions, workshops, and more kicking off on Monday, May 23.

1. Considering how to pay for new and expensive treatments

On the first full day of the meeting, a panel will discuss the potential of curative treatments and the new policies that may be needed to ensure patient access.

Another panel will discuss the concept of multi-indication pricing on the second day. Multi-indication drug pricing as a new way of drug reimbursement and has been debated in policy forums in both Europe and the US.

Finally, on the last day of the meeting, a panel will debate if alternative financing for high-cost treatments is necessary or feasible.

2. A spotlight on value frameworks

In just the last few years, a number of value frameworks have popped up that assess the clinical and economic value of treatments. A number of them focus on oncology, such as tools from the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

One panel will specifically explore the outputs from those 3 organizations’ respective tools, and how they could be improved. Then, on the last day of the meeting, there will be a panel focusing on the value that patients actually get from these tools.

3. Including the patients

The patient will be brought into the discussion of the usefulness of value frameworks on the last day of the meeting, but there will be plenty of other discussions that take the patient into account.

The first plenary session on will address patient safety as new legislative proposals are introduced to accelerate the development of cures. Ways to engage patients in clinical research studies and healthcare decision making will be considered in one workshop.

4. Issues facing health outcomes research

With precision medicine becoming more important, experts will discuss the role of outcomes research. The challenge presented is that this new field of medicine changes what should be considered when assessing value, cost, and cost effectiveness.

Meanwhile the final plenary session will tackle the subject of contemporary regulatory and legislative issues in health outcomes research with speakers from the FDA, the pharmaceutical industry, patient advocacy, and policy think tanks.

5. Nearly 2000 posters

With 5 different poster sessions going on, there will be more 1700 posters available for attendees covering disease-specific studies (such as in diabetes, oncology, infection, mental health, and more), healthcare use and policy studies, healthcare treatment studies, and research on methods studies.

On the final day of the meeting, ISPOR will give out awards for the best poster presentations.