Volume 2 • Number 1 • 1999VALUE IN HEALTH

© ISPOR 1098-3015/January/$10.50/3 3–4

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ISPOR Inaugural European Conference: An Overview

Donna Rindress, PhD

BioMedCom Consultants inc., Québec, Canada

A

successful ISPOR Inaugural European Con-ference held 10–12 December 1998 in Col-

ogne, Germany, boasted over 370 participantsfrom academia, the healthcare industry, consult-ing, healthcare providers, and government. Regis-tration exceeded expectations; in fact, so many ex-citing abstracts were submitted for considerationthat the conference was extended by a half day toaccommodate the greater than expected numberof presentations. While many conference partici-pants came from the United States and Canada(about 60), the majority attended from Europeancountries (over 300), and some made the longjourney from Russia, Asia, or Australia (14).

Thursday morning activities included stimulat-ing and well-attended preconference ISPOR shortcourses covering Pharmacoeconomics, DecisionAnalysis in Health Care, Meta-analysis and OtherStatistical Methods, and Quality-of-Life Instru-ments.

In the afternoon, welcoming remarks and pre-sentation of conference objectives were made byProgram Committee members: Peter Davey of theUniversity of Dundee, Scotland; Jonathan Cookeof South Manchester University Hospitals, En-gland; and Karl Lauterbach and Thomas Kur-scheid, both of the Institute for Health Economicsat the University of Cologne, Germany.

Following this introduction, Bernard Genesté ofRhône-Poulenc Rorer, France, moderated a work-shop on Presenting Pharmacoeconomic Informa-tion to European Policy-makers, where the speak-ers were Peter Davey, Karl Lauterbach, and ThomasKurscheid. At the same time, three concurrent po-dium presentation sessions took place on outcomesresearch issues and economic and outcomes studyresults. Oliver Mast of Bayer AG, Germany, mod-erated presentations on Cancer Research; JonathanCooke moderated those on Neurologic and Gas-tric Disorders; and Koen Torfs of Janssen Pharma-ceutica, Belgium, was moderator of talks given onPulmonary Disorders and Infectious Disease.

On Friday morning, Peter Davey moderated theFirst General Session, which comprised reports

and discussion about Developing Consensus onPharmacoeconomic Methodology. Joel Hay of theUniversity of Southern California summarized thediscussions and recommendations of the Method-ology Advisory Panels (using Clinical Studies,Modeling, and Databases for PharmacoeconomicResearch) from the ISPOR PharmacoeconomicsConsensus Development Conference in February1998. This was followed by a Summary Report ofthe HARMET European Commission Project—Harmonization of Methodology for EconomicEvaluation of Health Care Technologies in the Eu-ropean Union—given by Joan Rovira of SOIKOS,Department of Economics at the University ofBarcelona, Spain. Matthias Graf von Schulen-burg of the Centre for Health Economics andHealth System at the University of Hannover,Germany, followed with a Summary Report ofthe EUROMET European Commission Project onHealth Care Measurements and Indicators. Thesession ended with a lively panel discussion ofkey questions in pharmacoeconomic methodology.Panelists included Jonathan Cooke; Michael Drum-mond of the Centre for Health Economics at theUniversity of York, England; Livio Garattini ofthe Centre for Health Economics at the Institutefor Pharmacological Research at Ranica, Italy;Bengt Jönsson of the Stockholm School of Eco-nomics, Sweden; Karl Lauterbach; and Frank Peysof the Belgian Institute for Health Economics, Bel-gium.

The Second General Session on Friday after-noon, Using Evidence-Based Medicine to DeliverCost-Effective Health Care, focused on cardiovas-cular disease. Karl Lauterbach discussed Contro-versies with Lipid-lowering Agents, and UlrichKeil, from the Institute of Epidemiology and So-cial Medicine at the University of Münster, Ger-many, discussed a nine-country survey on cardio-vascular risk factors.

This session was followed by simultaneous con-tributed podium presentations of original studiesin economic and outcomes research. Topics in-cluded Cardiovascular Disease, moderated by

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Thomas Kurscheid; Mental Health, moderated byCharlotte McMillan of Wyeth-Ayerst Research inFrance; and Diabetes and Infectious Disease, mod-erated by Diana Brixner of Novartis Pharmaceuti-cals, United States.

On Friday evening, a keynote presentation wasmade by Professor Gerhard Krueger, Dean, Col-ogne University Medical School, speaking on thecrucial subject of “Why Should the Dean of aMedical School Be Concerned About ManagedCare?” Robert Epstein of Merck-Medco ManagedCare, United States, and President of ISPOR thenspoke of the growth of ISPOR and those chal-lenges that lie ahead.

The meeting ended on Saturday with the FourthGeneral Session, Using Disease Management toDeliver Cost-Effective Health Care, with a focuson diabetes, moderated by Karl Lauterbach. Thefirst speaker, Gregory Gilmet of Quality and Out-comes Research, Blue Care Network of Michigan,United States, described his organization’s Data-Driven Diabetes Disease Management program, aprototype in this field. Andrew Morris, MEMO,Ninewells Hospital and Medical School, DundeeTeaching Hospitals, Scotland, finished the sessionwith his talk, Working at the Population Level:The Future of Diabetes Management.

Two sessions of contributed workshops werefitted into the busy program schedule with 13 pre-sentations in all. These followed the pattern al-

ready well established at the annual ISPOR meet-ings, with each workshop being presented twice,back-to-back, to allow each conference participantto attend more than one workshop at each ses-sion. Presentations were relevant to one of fourthemes: Decision Support Systems and Models,Guidelines and Standards, Quality of Life Assess-ment, or Study Methods.

Sixty contributed poster presentations offeredoriginal research findings and methodological de-velopments over the 3 days of the meeting in thetherapeutic domains of Cancer and AIDS, Cardio-vascular Disease, Gastrointestinal and Urinary TractDisorders, Diabetes, Infectious Disease, MentalHealth and Neurologic Disorders, and Pulmonaryand Arthritic Disorders, as well as Pharmacoeco-nomic Methods and Cost of Care Studies.

Exhibitors from around the world providedcontract research, software, database, and scien-tific information.

The conference was an auspicious opening forISPOR’s rapidly growing European presence. Theconference admirably fulfilled ISPOR’s vision of“translating science into practice” for people ofmany diverse languages and cultures. The secondISPOR European conference will be held in Edin-burgh, Scotland, 10–13 November 1999 (see www.ispor.org for further details).

May it be as exciting and educational as thefirst European meeting!