HEOR + ISPOR = Making an Impact

Jan Elias Hansen, PhD, Vice President, Genentech, South San Francisco, CA and President (2022-2023), ISPOR, Lawrenceville, NJ, USA

I am so honored and excited to begin my term as your ISPOR President for the 2022-2023 term. It was wonderful to connect with so many of you at ISPOR 2022, the Society’s first “hybrid” conference, where participants attended sessions in person and virtually.

Vision

I am passionate about making an impact and believe that the discipline of HEOR and ISPOR as a global organization are well positioned to do this now. ISPOR and our community of highly trained and skilled HEOR professionals can impact today’s healthcare landscape in both big and small ways by informing the wide range of issues healthcare decision makers are increasingly confronted with in our challenging world, especially on the heels of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In my presidential vision statement, I outlined how we can accelerate the impact of HEOR by:

• Engaging healthcare stakeholders

• Applying HEOR to address challenges and pain points

• Informing healthcare issues through the use of HEOR data and approaches that are scientifically rigorous and sound

ISPOR Resources

My vision statement certainly reflects an audacious challenge. While we may take for granted the impact we already make both from an individual perspective and on each other as a community of HEOR professionals, we are making an impact on a broader level where bold improvements are already happening—thanks to better informed healthcare decision makers who are benefiting from the efforts and robust research produced by ISPOR members.

In accordance with ISPOR’s Strategic Pillars, there are numerous ISPOR resources and tools that are helping our colleagues from around the world invest in their own skills and find enriching careers that allow them to put the HEOR discipline at the forefront of enabling informed healthcare decisions. Some of these examples include:

• The “Top 10 HEOR Trends” report is being shared with healthcare stakeholders and industry executives as a way of educating diverse audiences about HEOR topics

• The competency framework has been used as the basis for surveying HEOR fellows, influencing the structure and curriculum of fellowships, and ultimately helping individuals secure jobs in this field

• ISPOR Short Courses are being leveraged to expand knowledge and build expertise in the understanding and use of specific HEOR topics, methods, and approaches, ultimately expanding capabilities and skills and supporting ISPOR members in their technical growth and development 

• And finally, ISPOR Special Interest Groups are providing communities for HEOR professionals to ”dig in” and connect with others where they have great passion or where they want to learn more, ultimately extracting value for themselves and for the stakeholders who benefit from all that HEOR insights have to offer

The real power of this profession is revealed when it can be leveraged in bigger, bolder ways to transform and make “real” change to healthcare systems and healthcare decisions around the world. 

Impact

At ISPOR 2022, I presented a few powerful examples of how HEOR—facilitated directly through ISPOR membership—is having an impact.

• Eric Jutkowitz with Brown University and Laura Pizzi (now at ISPOR) worked with a team of researchers at the University of Connecticut to conduct a comprehensive cost analysis on the Caring for Older Persons in their Environment (COPE) program.¹ The results of this work were used to make the case to successfully obtain federal funds supporting state-wide implementation of the program through the existing care management infrastructure, impacting and improving the access patients requiring dementia care have to this program in Connecticut

• Jaime Caro and his team, at the request of a National Health Service (NHS) Foundation Trust, developed a model that assisted in the planning and estimated needed hospital resources (eg, critical care beds) for managing patients with COVID-19.² A simulation model plotted actual patient trajectories and resulted in capacity estimates for critical care beds. NHS hospitals were able to expand bed capacity to better prepare for waves of COVID-19

• ISPOR regional chapters have recently been involved in the development of national guidelines in an expansive set of countries including Algeria, Chile, Czech Republic, Ghana, India, Hungary, South Africa, New Zealand, and Thailand. Through the engagement of ISPOR chapters with these national governments, ISPOR members have been able to influence health technology assessment, pricing and reimbursement, and economic evaluation approaches used in these countries

How You Can Make an Impact

There are many possibilities for making an impact, and they are happening each and every day across the world. As I begin my Presidential term, my ask of you as an expert in the field of HEOR is to:

Develop yourselves as leaders in this profession

• Invest in your own expertise and skills

• Be ready to explain to other stakeholders across the healthcare continuum why this work makes a difference. This will further strengthen the value and credibility of the HEOR profession

Be passionate and curious about the impact your work can have

• Determine how your work should be shared and leveraged—and push for its use even beyond the traditional means of scientific publications

Advocate and evangelize for your work and this profession!

• Think about how what you do today can make a direct impact on a future healthcare question, issue, or decision

• Evangelize and share your experiences and the impact you are having with me, with the HEOR community, and with the world

My Commitment to You

I also make a commitment to you: to frequently and consistently communicate with you on the impact that the HEOR discipline and ISPOR has in the world. We are also asking you to share your “stories of impact” with us—some of which may be included in my communications as impactful case examples of how HEOR is making a change and improving healthcare decision making. If you have a story of impact that you would like to share, please email it to me at leadership@ispor.org.

I am sincerely enthused about hearing from you and sharing how you’re making a difference. Together we can amplify the voice of HEOR and of ISPOR as we work to achieve our mission and goals to improve decision making for health globally.

Let’s plan to meet in Boston in a year to celebrate your successes and the advancement of the HEOR discipline in informing some of the toughest healthcare issues of our time!

References

1. Pizzi LT, Jutkowitz E, Prioli KM, et al. Cost-benefit analysis of the COPE program for persons living with dementia: toward a payment model. Innov Aging. 2021;Oct 16;6(1):igab042. doi: 10.1093/geroni/igab042

2. Caro JJ, Möller J, Santhirapala V, et al. Predicting hospital resource use during COVID-19 surges: a simple but flexible discretely integrated condition event simulation of individual patient-hospital trajectories. Value Health. 2021;24(11):1570-1577.