Featured Sessions

In this talk, Chris Lawer, Umio founder, author and UCLA Public Health Senior Fellow will provide a brief introduction to his Health Ecosystem Value Design® framework, the first and only ecosystem design framework tailored for health and care. Come along to learn the core principles of his ecosystem perspective on health, illness and disease, socio-environmental determinants and experience, and to discover novel methods for defining, assessing and advancing health ecosystem value. The talk will conclude with a quick app-based Q&A session with Chris who will offer tips for applying ecosystem thinking in your organization.

Speaker:

Chris Lawer, CEO/Founder, Senior Fellow, Umio, Oxford, UK, UCLA, Center for Healthier Children, Families and Communities, Los Angeles, California, USA

FutureProofing Healthcare is an initiative that officially launched at the end of 2019 to examine the fundamental drivers of sustainable healthcare systems, compare approaches between countries, identify elements that lead to more sustainable care and promote best practices. The point of this project is to take an objective view of how health systems are performing today to prepare them for the future: every country is encouraged to investigate areas for improvement, to see what can be learned from country peers, and from each other to improve standards across Europe. FutureProofing Healthcare consists of the Sustainability Index, which analyzes country-level performance on several indicators of health system sustainability, and a rotating annual disease-specific index, that takes a closer look at the patient journey through the lens of one disease. FutureProofing Healthcare focused last year on the Breast Cancer Index, and this year`s disease-specific index will address Multiple Sclerosis. Against the background of digital transformation in healthcare, a key question to be addressed at the event is how governments inform their decision-making based on data.

The event will take the form of a cross-fire talk between two members of the FutureProofing Healthcare expert panel: Panos Kanavos, Associate Professor of International Health Policy, London School of Economics, and Mary Harney, Former Tánaiste (Deputy Prime Minister) and Minister for Health of Ireland. The conversation between Panos Kanavos and Mary Harney would focus on the importance of identifying and sharing best practices for healthcare sustainability, while taking a forward-looking perspective on how new trends such as the digitalization of the healthcare sector through real-world evidence and increased systematic data collection can lead to improved ways to measure healthcare system performance, and as a result, enable more informed decision-making. The discussion would take about 20 minutes in total, including an app-based Q&A with the audience.

Speakers:

Panos Kanavos, Associate Professor, London School of Economics, London, UK
Mary Harney, Adviser, Former Tánaiste (Deputy Prime Minister) and Minister for Health of Ireland, Dublin, Ireland

With the rise of tailored innovative health technologies including combinations of technologies, co-dependent technologies and personalized medicine, the current paradigm of Health Technology Assessment (HTA) that still predominantly focuses on single technologies needs to be adapted. There is a growing need for HTA that is capable of identifying for whom health technologies work and for whom they are not essential, hereby guaranteeing that the right treatment is provided, to the right patient, at the right time.

Wim Goettsch, Associate Professor for HTA at Utrecht University, Netherlands, will introduce HTx, a new H2020 project with the primary goal to develop and implement new methods for HTA. Before starting his presentation, he will poll the audience on some questions regarding the need for new HTA methods in the era of personalized healthcare. Subsequently, in his presentation he will indicate how HTx aims to develop new HTA methods that will be able to deliver more customized information on the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of complex and personalized combinations of health technologies. As part of his presentation, Wim will discuss in the Q&A format what is needed to implement these new HTA methods in HTA practice.

Speaker:

Wim Goettsch, Associate Professor for HTA, Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands

This session will provide a brief overview of the RWE Transparency Initiative and then focus on several of the key challenges in moving it forward. These challenges include: establishing a protocol template this inclusive enough to be clearly specify the hypothesis(es) to be tested and the analytics to be used; the conditions needed to ensure trust that any prior analyses of the data in question did not provide prior information about the hypotheses being tested; and the external incentives that could help lead to registration of RWD study protocols, and the posting of their results, becoming common practice.

Moderator:

Richard Willke, PhD, Chief Science Officer, ISPOR, Lawrenceville, NJ, USA

Speakers:

Shirley Wang, PhD, Assistant Professor in Medicine Division of Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics, Department of Medicine Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
Daniel Mullins, PhD, Professor and Chair, Pharmaceutical Health Services Research, University of Maryland, School of Pharmacy, Baltimore, MD, USA
Marc Berger, MD, Special Advisor on RWE, ISPOR, New York, NY, US
Andrew Bate, PhD, Sr Director, Epidemiology Group Lead Epidemiology, Pfizer, Surrey, UKA

Cross-border collaboration on joint HTA or joint pricing negotiations are not new initiatives, however in order to truly embrace the concept, and succeed with the proposed transition to a new practice, one needs to have a clear understanding of the path to ultimate outcome and the envisioned impact of the change efforts. The current European cross-border collaboration initiatives claim to offer better access to pharmaceuticals for European patients, and have gathered a wealth of practical experience with individual projects. The participants will update and reflect on recent developments in the cross-border initiatives in the context of the transformation of healthcare systems that is accelerated by digital technologies. The session will also address the following questions: What objectives of cross-border collaboration are shared by all affected? What will cross-border collaboration require individual countries to give up? For whom and why the proposed change in the current practice of HTA, price negotiation, procurement is necessary? What will happen if we stick to the status quo in the European countries’ individual practices? What is needed to move beyond joint discussions and “agreement to agree/disagree”?

Sarah Garner, PhD, Coordinator, Innovation, Access and Use, Essential Medicines and Health Products Department World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland

Speakers:

Francis Arickx, Pharm.D, Head of the Directorate Pharmaceutical Policy, National Institute for Health and Disability Insurance (RIZIV-INAMI), Brussels, Belgium

Dominik Dziurda, MBA, Head of Head Services Division, Agency for Health Technology Assessment and Tariff System (AOTMiT), Warsaw, Poland

Edith Frénoy, Director, Market Access/HTA, EFPIA, Brussels, Belgium

Flora Giorgio, PhD, Head of Sector, HTA, Directorate General Health and Food Safety (DG SANTE), European Commission, Brussels, Belgium

Niklas Hedberg, Chief Pharmacist, The Dental and Pharmaceutical Benefits Agency (TLV), Stockholm, Sweden