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News
Greenflint and Rx Communications at ISPOR's 9th Annual European Meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark
November 2006
by Adelina Pagliocca
 Rx Communications and Greenflint had a strong presence at the 9th annual European meeting of the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR), 28–31 October in Copenhagen, with marketing manager Chris Gardiner, editorial manager Adelina Pagliocca, and project manager Maggie Jones (pictured right) in attendance. Once again, Rx attracted considerable interest among the one thousand or so registrants.
See the December issue of our ezine Health Outcomes Communicator for a report of the conference.
Our booth featured Rx sister company Greenflint, whose models are designed to help in early-stage decisions, cutting costs, making strategic decisions during development, and creating a promotional message. Modelling was the theme, with attendees invited to craft models out of red and green clay. With red clay, attendees were asked to create a communication tool, and with the green clay, to model their favourite item. This creative challenge produced, amongst other entries, a dove carrying an olive branch, a football match between Copenhagen and England, a bottle of ‘probably' Denmark's best export, and a Christmas tree.
The theme of the congress was “Asking critical questions”. The first plenary session was introduced by Bengt Jønsson, PhD, who initiated the discussion on the use of health technology assessment (HTA) as a basis for reimbursement and priorities in healthcare. Richard Bergström, MScPharm, presented the HTA principles adopted by EFPIA and industry's perspective on promoting good use of HTA. One key message was the need for increased communication between industry and payers, and a decision on the best practices for Europe . Audun Hågå, MSc, discussed priority decisions from a government perspective focusing on Nordic countries. He explained the way in which reimbursement decisions are made and reminded the audience that governments must think about the population as a whole, and not the individual patient.
The second plenary session was a debate between Professor Paul Glasziou PhD, FRACGP, and Ivar Sonbo Kristiansen, MD, PhD, MPH, and was moderated by Kjeld Møller Pedersen. This session examined questions surrounding evidence based medicine (EBM). Dr Kristiansen questioned the use of EBM in health policy, he urged the audience to be more humble in interpreting the results of randomised clinical trials (RCT), and suggested that EBM does not improve patients' health. Dr Kristiansen also questioned the Cochrane collaboration, suggesting it is an anti-industry movement that should be consulted with caution. Professor Glasziou retaliated by providing examples of when an RCT is required, although he agreed that RCTs are not always the best approach, suggesting that the best study design depends on the type of question one is attempting to answer. With regards to the Cochrane collaboration, Professor Glasziou explained the background and stressed that the collaboration is not anti-industry, and when used properly is a good tool to aid physicians in choosing the correct medication for their patients. The speaker finished by stating that EBM clearly improves people's health but suggested that we need to collect the correct evidence, and find a good way of using the data generated.
The third plenary session addressed the societal value of the QALY. Professor Dorte Gyrd-Hansen, PhD, gave a critical view demonstrating that the task of performing a linear translation from QALYs to willingness to pay (WTP) is theoretically and empirically unattainable. The speaker stressed that we need to think carefully about study design and interpretation of results. Professor Martin Buxton, BA (Soc Sci), argued that ‘social' WTP values are interesting but of no immediate relevance. The speaker stressed that a health system is responsible for the entire population and a WTP threshold needs to be set. This threshold should ensure that technologies adopted are always more valuable than other new alternatives and any displaced activities.
In addition to the plenary sessions, there were 28 thought-provoking workshops, 6 issue panel presentations, 64 contributed presentations, and almost 600 posters. As a novice to the pharmacoeconomic and outcomes research arena, I found ISPOR particularly enjoyable as the speakers did their utmost to provide a good background to each session, the debates were lively, and the workshops were extremely informative.
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Previous news
November 2006
Greenflint and Rx have moved June 2006
Greenflint launched at ISPOR in Philadelphia
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