16 Volume 18 Number 4 July/August 2012 ISPOR cONNEcTIONS

I was very pleased and grateful to attend the ISPOR 17th Annual International Meeting. It was an enriching experience that was made possible by the ISPOR

Meeting Travel Scholarship Award.

This was my first ISPOR event, after becoming an ISPOR member, and I was impressed by the number of professionals from around the world. This meeting made me realize the importance of knowledge diffusion and learn more about pharmacoeconomics and outcomes research.

Currently I work in the Ministry of Health of Brazil as a pharmacy consultant to the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO). I conduct studies of Health Technology Assessment for the Brazilian National Health System (SUS).

My participation in this important meeting was instrumental in bringing together my knowledge, reaffirming my professional area, and scoping projects and partnerships with other professionals and researchers.

I attended plenary sessions, forums, workshops and research sessions and poster presentations. I am amazed by the diversity of topics discussed, the work presented, and its importance in health decision making around the world.

The 5-day experience at the ISPOR 17th Annual International Meeting gave me the ability to return to Brazil to start new projects and to more effectively contribute to the health system in my country. In the Ministry of Health, I plan to develop activities in HTA studies, applying the knowledge I learned at this meeting.

Finally, I would like to collaborate with ISPOR and other institutions involved in Health Technology Assessment and become involved in the ISPOR Latin America Regional Chapters. My goal is to contribute to improving the health of the Brazilian population, based on my ISPOR experience.

My Experience at the ISPOR 17th Annual International Meeting and its Importance for Health Policy in BrazilKathiaja Miranda Souza, Pharmacist, coordenação geral de Avaliação de Tecnologias em Saúde (general coordination of Health

Technology Assessment), Departamento de ciência e Tecnologia- DEcIT (Department of Science and Technology), Secretaria de

ciência, Tecnologia e Insumos Estratégicos– ScTIE (Secretariat for Science, Technoloy and Strategic Input), Ministério da Saúde –

MS (Brazilian Ministry of Health), Belo Horizonte, Brazil

I appreciated being awarded an ISPOR Meeting Travel Scholarship Award, which gave me the opportunity to attend the ISPOR 17th Annual International

Meeting in Washington, DC, USA. I gained a great deal of technical and professional experience many international connections.

I attended four short courses: CER Alongside Clinical Trials, Meta-analysis, Network Meta-Analysis, and Utility Analysis. I enjoyed not only the rich content, but also the way it was presented. The presenters were professional and experienced. They used a good approach of presenting the theoretical background and then the practical applications in the form of case studies, guided discussion groups, and others.

I arranged my schedule to attend as many sessions (plenary sessions, workshops, issue panels, and educational symposia) as possible. For the overlapping sessions, it was difficult for me to select which one to attend, but I finally picked one and was keen on collecting the material for others and discussing it with the presenters or audience later.

I was invited to a number of meetings which were a great opportunity to share my opinion and learn how others think and how to work with a team to achieve a mutual goal. In an ISPOR task force group meeting, one of the points we discussed was to translate a questionnaire to be more accessible to the responder. I transferred this recommendation to both the Arabic and African networks in our corresponding meetings and received a very positive response

from both of them. Also, the ISPOR Egyptian Regional Chapter meeting was a great opportunity to meet the chapter advisors who are PhD candidates in the USA. The round-table meeting made many things clear and added much to our chapter as compared to just email and conference call communication.

Great memories that can never be forgotten are my poster presentation and talk in this ISPOR meeting. The poster was, “Is Sildenafil-Apomorphine Sublingual Combination Significantly More Effective than Sublingual Sildenafil for the Treatment of Male Erectile Dysfunction?” and the talk title was, “Problems, Pitfalls, and Pragmatics of Pharmacoeconomics: Lessons from the Egyptian Experience,” which was a part of the African forum session.

After this great event, I now have a good deal of experience to transfer to my colleagues and undergraduate/postgraduate students in Egypt through workshops and seminars. I will work on implementing this experience to the Egyptian pharmacy schools curricula. Meanwhile, I am planning to start local pharmacoeconomic and outcomes research in Egypt and collaborative research with regional and international colleagues I connected with during the conference. In this way, we can improve the pharmacoeconomic and outcomes research and practice both locally and globally.

Lastly, I would like to offer my special thanks to the ISPOR staff that did a perfect job in making this event a success.

Enriching Knowledge and Initiating the Practice of Pharmacoeconomics and Out-comes Research in Developing countriesMohamed H. Solayman, Assistant Lecturer, clinical Pharmacy Department, Faculty of Pharmacy, Ain Shams University, cairo, Egypt