20 volume 19 number 4 JULY/AUGUST 2013 iSPor CoNNeCtioNS

iSPor iN aCtioN

ISPOR Meeting Travel Scholarship Award Reports The ISPOR Meeting Travel Scholarship Award was established in 2006 to support travel to ISPOR meetings or regional conferences for ISPOR members residing in economically disadvantaged countries or regions of the world and to contribute to the development of pharmacoeconomics and outcomes research or the use of outcomes research in health care decisions in these countries or regions.

After the ISPOR Meeting Travel Scholarship Award experience, recipients submit a report outlining how they contributed to the development of pharmacoeconomics and outcomes research or the use of outcomes research in health care decisions in their own country/region based on this experience. The following are reports from Meeting Travel Scholarship recipients from the ISPOR 18th Annual International Meeting held in New Orleans, LA, USA, from May 18-22, 2012.

iC

My ISPOR 18th Annual International Meeting ExperienceMahmood Ahmad, MSc, PhD, RPh, Dean, Faculty of Pharmacy and Alternative Medicine, the Islamia University of Bahawalpur, Bahawalpur, Pakistan

It is my pleasure to congratulate the organizers of the ISPOR 18th Annual International Meeting on a successful and incredible commencement of this prestigious mega event that was held on May 18-22, 2013, at the Sheraton New Orleans, New Orleans, LA, USA. I highly appreciate the dedication and commitment of the ISPOR staff and Committees of the ISPOR 18th Annual International Meeting for running the whole event smoothly. I was happy to receive a 2013 ISPOR Meeting Travel Scholarship Award. This award afforded me an opportunity to present two research poster presentations:“Prescribing Pattern of Clinicians in Private Health Facilities: An Assessment for Rational Drug Use,” and “Prevalence, diagnosis & treatment protocols for breast cancer in Southern Punjab.”I also served as a coauthor for one poster presentation. I was also honored to judge a podium and poster presentation.

At this Meeting, I attended three short courses, the productive and informative plenary sessions, workshops, educational symposia, five poster sessions, as

well as other sessions. The first short course that I attended was “Introduction to Pharmacoeconomics” (a full day course). The second course was “The Reader Expectation Approach to Professional Writing,” and the third course was “Risk-Sharing/Performance-Based Arrangements for Drugs and Other Medical Products.”There was much I learned from these informative and productive courses.The meeting provided me a very good opportunity to interact with skilled and experienced researchers in the area of pharmacoeconomics and outcomes research from around the world. I have realized the importance of outcomes research as a powerful tool for rational health care decision making in resource-limited countries like Pakistan.

I highly appreciate the financial support from ISPOR to researchers from developing countries. After learning about pharmacoeconomics and outcomes research, I feel more confident in contributing and supporting the objectives of the ISPOR Pakistan Regional Chapter.

Patient-Centered Outcomes: Focusing on the Patient Christine de nazaré Silva Koury, Brazilian Ministry of Health, Brasilia, Brazil

I would like to give my profound thanks for the financial support I received through the ISPOR Travel Scholarship Award. This award enabled me to attend the ISPOR 18th Annual International Meeting, which was held in New Orleans, LA, USA, May 18-22, 2013. During the five-day meeting, I attended plenary sessions that focused on the patients’ perspective and how state health systems are working to developing more systematic ways of gathering information from the patient perspective. I also attended four short courses covering topics from economic models to instrumental variables. These courses matched perfectly with the plenary subjects.

I work for the Health Technology Assessment Coordination in the Brazilian Public Health System (SUS). Brazil has a public policy that ensures the public free access to a list of medicines. Spending on medicines has been growing, especially for rare diseases, so pharmacoeconomic studies are becoming very important when making decisions.

I have attended many other meetings before, but I was impressed by the quantity of specialists with the same expectation to learn and improve tools to support the management of political decisions about rare disease/orphan drugs. One of

the many workshops I attended was about “measuring patient reported outcomes in rare diseases.” Here, I learned more about patients’ perspectives, and during the poster presentations, I had an opportunity to absorb information regarding trends in this specific area.

I feel privileged to receive this award. Attending the ISPOR 18th International Meeting has enriched my understanding of health economics and outcomes research by virtue of my participation and interaction with eminent scholars, teachers and critics at the highly revered international conference. This meeting helped me to develop professional contacts which I look forward to reaching out to with exciting ideas for HTA and other research-related ideas. I strongly believe that ISPOR’s support has been very helpful for the promotion of evidence-based decision making in health care in developing countries such as Brazil, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank the ISPOR authorities for granting this award.