From the Regions

Editor’s Note: Value & Outcomes Spotlight talked to the presidents of ISPOR regional chapters that were recognized with this year’s Outstanding Chapter Award and asked them to reflect on the COVID-19 crisis and the postpandemic world in their regions.

An Interview With the ISPOR 2020 Outstanding Chapter Award Winners: Austria, Mexico, and Mongolia Chapters

The ISPOR Outstanding Chapter Award program recognizes ISPOR regional chapters’ outstanding contribution and leadership in advancing ISPOR’s mission in global regions: Asia, Latin America, and Europe, Middle East, and Africa. The ISPOR Austria, Mexico, and Mongolia chapters have been recognized for their exemplary achievements in advancing health economics and outcomes research (HEOR) in their regions. The award is based on a thorough review of chapters’ compliance with ISPOR governance, input to ISPOR publications, and contribution to ISPOR activities throughout the year as described in their annual reports.

ISPOR Austria Chapter
Beate Jahn, PhD
ISPOR Austria Chapter President

What qualities/aspects of your chapter (activities) are you most proud of? How will you ensure this success will continue next year? What would you hope to improve or develop in your chapter for 2021?

The ISPOR Austria Regional Chapter is very proud and feels extremely honored to receive the Outstanding Chapter Award from ISPOR, the leading global scientific and educational organization for health economics and outcomes research. The aim of the Austrian chapter is to provide a platform for networking and to actively engage different healthcare stakeholders. With our established working group on “Applied Digital Data Transformation and Strategic Patient Empowerment,” we connect patient representatives, academia, government, industry, and healthcare professionals.

“We were happy that our rather small chapter led an international exchange about ‘Strategic Patient Empowerment and Digital Data’ at our ISPOR Forum at ISPOR Europe 2019, sharing Austrian successes and challenges in healthcare practice with the broader ISPOR community and discussing international comparisons to make it a joint learning experience with identified research gaps.” - Chapter President Beate Jahn (UMIT – Tirol)

Our goal for 2021 is to strengthen the chapter by supporting our diverse members in the wake of COVID-19 in making evidence-based, informed healthcare decisions through digital administrative/real-world data analysis, linkage, patient engagement, and health technology assessment developments. Come and join us!

What do you consider are the most important lessons learned from the COVID-19 crisis and how this will affect the future of healthcare? What are some of the health policies that have come out of the COVID-19 pandemic in your country?

The most important lessons learned from the COVID-19 crisis is how to come together in a crisis regardless of political agenda or personal beliefs.

Austria’s Chapter Vice president, Noemi Kiss (ÖGK) acknowledges that one of the most impressive examples was Austria’s fast and successful expansion into digital health, including digital prescriptions and doctor’s visits. It was a vital step in order to uphold high-quality care, especially for patients with chronic conditions during and after the COVID-19 lockdown.

Efficiency of the new system and processes established under immense time pressure are now being evaluated and adjusted to ensure sustainable healthcare improvement. Due to COVID-19, public health data collection, systematic evidence synthesis, and decision-analytic modeling using sound methods combined with evidence-based risk communication are more relevant than ever. We are grateful to chapter members and colleagues who worked tirelessly to produce high-quality, timely, and relevant information to support healthcare decision making and initiate new HEOR related COVID-19 research projects. 

What are your thoughts on the post-pandemic world, and what do you think will be the role of HEOR?

The role of HEOR is expanding further into political thinking and decision making on all levels of government, into clinical practice and public discussion. We are proud to be part of ISPOR, a society in which members push the boundaries of HEOR research to improve healthcare for all.

When we discussed with Niki Popper (DEXHELPP, TU Vienna), our former founding Chapter President, who is a modelling and simulation expert for the Austrian Ministry of Social Affairs, and member of the Consumer Protection’s COVID-19 Task Force, he mentioned that “HEOR topics, including efficient utilization of scarce resources, and stakeholder-relevant preferences and outcome measures, as well as principles of equity are a driving force for decision making. In the postepidemic world, digitalization, telemedicine, and artificial intelligence will be applied to complex health and economic data to support a healthcare system that is sustainable and responsive at the same time.”

ISPOR Mexico Chapter
Cesar Alberto Cruz Santiago, MSc, PhD, MD
ISPOR Mexico Chapter President

 

What qualities/aspects of your chapter (activities) are you most proud of? How will you ensure this success will continue next year? What would you hope to improve or develop in your chapter for 2021?

Every month, the ISPOR Mexico chapter prepares sessions to keep members updated on issues of health economics, our healthcare system, or relevant aspects on a day-to-day basis, such as the pandemic and our environment.

One of the aspects that we are proud of as a chapter is that the number of attendees to these events remains constant, even now with the pandemic. Even with remote interactions, people are still interested in staying updated with the chapter. We always strive for these sessions to be of the highest quality, with highly relevant national and international speakers.

Another of the activities with which we are very proud is that we have worked together with the government and industry on a project led by the ISPOR Mexico chapter to establish quality indicators in Mexico and thus be able to carry out economic evaluations (cost-utility analysis) with information from our country. This activity is unprecedented and will surely generate tools that allow the generation of more economic evidence in our country for the best decision making.

Another important development is that the ISPOR Mexico Student chapter is now a reality. After many attempts, its inauguration was finally possible. From the student chapter, we will promote to the new generations the importance of HEOR.

We will work hard to maintain the same interest towards the chapter, generating work sessions in which industry, academia, and government participate in such a way that the members of the chapter continue to be engaged. In so doing, we hope to attract new members, including more students.

What do you consider are the most important lessons learned from the COVID-19 crisis and how this will affect the future of healthcare? What are some of the health policies that have come out of the COVID-19 pandemic in your country?

Although the pandemic has been something that nobody expected, we have learned to work with it. In the case of the chapter, what we have done is continue working to generate virtual meetings to keep people updated. Undoubtedly, this has been a different experience, but it has also helped us because we have been able to have sessions with international speakers through these platforms that allow us to work from home.

The world will not be the same after COVID-19 and the health systems have to adapt to different conditions. The greatest challenge is to continue giving the best attention to patients with COVID and not stop caring for patients with other diseases, such as cancer and cardiovascular and metabolic illnesses.

What are your thoughts on the postpandemic world, and what do you think will be the role of HEOR?

The postpandemic world has a lot to learn. Normal conditions will not be the same as those experienced in March 2020—economic conditions, political conditions, and health conditions are going to be different; resources and budgets will be scarce. In this stage, we will have to make the best possible decisions and we need the best help available.

HEOR will undoubtedly continue to be a tool to improve decision making. HEOR will continue to guide and inform evidence generation that allows us to see the clinical and economic benefits of interventions, especially now in a context where the health system has been affected by the pandemic.

ISPOR Mongolia Chapter
Ganbat Byambaa, MD, MPH, MHSM, PhD
ISPOR Mongolia Chapter President

What qualities/aspects of your chapter (activities) are you most proud of?

Our small but passionate team consisted mostly of academics and policy makers, as well dedicated ad hoc members. Since 2011, almost a decade has passed and I am proud that Mongolia is taking strong and solid steps towards developing and utilizing evidence-based science and promoting and implementing healthcare reforms. Looking back, I am honored that we were involved in numerous research projects and organized even more training and workshops to distribute knowledge and information about health economics, and contribute to building and maintaining communication between different stakeholders, including the public and private institutions. We were also successful in promoting the ISPOR Mongolia Chapter and were able to learn from our international colleagues. In addition, we successfully produced training materials, educational books and an HTA guideline. These documents are essential to the creation of appropriate conversation and guidance for our decision makers and educators.

How will you ensure this success will continue next year?

Next year, we plan to organize our regular trainings and meetings with healthcare stakeholders, researchers, academics, assessors and regulators; payers and policy makers; the life sciences industry; healthcare providers; decision makers and patient engagement organizations. In particular, I would like to emphasize the importance of learning from evidence-based experiences and sharing good practices. Building capacity is an important step towards ensuring the success in future, therefore I would like to recruit more members from various disciplines and increase the representatives of the Society among the relevant stakeholders. Moreover, I plan to support and provide guidance for projects and research works, as well as share our experience with ISPOR Chapters in different countries.

What would you hope to improve or develop in your chapter for 2021?

First and foremost, the ISPOR Mongolia Chapter will hopefully remain active and dedicate to slowly shift towards beyond pharmacoeconomics to consider medical devices, diagnostics, procedures, and other health interventions. I also emphasize that key goals of the ISPOR Mongolia Chapter will be research and scientific excellence and hopefully we will continue to contribute successfully to improving decision making for health, including adopting and implementing good practices in Mongolia. Concurrently, the ISPOR Mongolia Chapter will continue to promote learning, sharing good practices, and building capacity, which are currently essential to our work. Of particular interest is our further work with regards to health technology assessment and efficiency and effectiveness of interventional strategies for COVID-19 response.

What do you consider are the most important lessons learned from the COVID-19 crisis, and how this will affect the future of healthcare? What are some of the health policies that have come out of the COVID-19 pandemic in your country?

Earlier in the year, multisource surveillance did not detect any COVID-19 infections in our communities. As of June 23, 2020, 215 COVID-19 imported cases from repatriated people have been confirmed and isolated in COVID-19 designated hospitals. A majority of these detected cases were recovered (n=158, 73.5%). Currently, there is no high volume of COVID-19 patients admitted to the healthcare system; however, preparing to balance between routine essential services and COVID-19–designated health services in the case of communal outbreak of COVID-19 is of high priority.

Mongolia officially declared a state of high-alert preparedness in February 2020, with a complete lockdown closing all schools, kindergartens, and educational institutions starting from January 27, 2020 and restricting all travel to and from countries with active cases of COVID-19. Implementation of nonpharmaceutical interventions bought the country a precious time window to prepare its health system. The government action based on multisectoral collaboration under leadership of the national emergency commission was undertaken very early, including sweeping public health measures to protect its citizens, and has greatly assisted in minimizing the spread of COVID-19.

What are your thoughts on the postpandemic world, and what do you think will be the role of HEOR?

The world is experiencing the worst crisis in recent history. Being far more than a health crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting all aspects of societies and their economies, exposing prevailing structural fragilities, and deepening pre-existing inequalities in the countries. Social distancing, school closures, online teaching, work from home, wearing face masks, and hand washing to protect individual safety, and enforced restriction measures for social security are all new challenges and create a “new normal” in our lives.

Universal health coverage and leaving no one behind policies will become important more than ever and require more strategic action from the countries’ governments. Innovation, knowledge sharing, and new ways of thinking will be the most effective way to build capacity and produce best evidence and practice in HEOR areas. Socioeconomic impact analysis, effectiveness and efficiency of clinical management, infection prevention and control measures, and improving health system preparedness and response mechanisms should be important priorities for HEOR.