The Society for Medical Decision Making (SMDM) held their 17th European Conference between 10th and 12th June at the Stadsgehoorzaal in Leiden, the Netherlands. The meeting was chaired by Anne Stiggelbout and Ewout Steyerberg who, along with Uwe Siebert, welcomed us (early) on Monday morning. Some delegates arrived on Sunday for short courses on a range of topics, from modelling in R and causal inference to the psychology of decision making.
Although based in the US, SMDM holds biennial meetings in Europe which are generally attended by delegates from around the world. Around 300 delegates were in attendance at this meeting, travelling from Toronto to Tehran.
The meeting was ‘Patients Included’ and we were introduced to around 10 patients and caregivers on the first morning. They confidently asked questions and gave comments after the presentations and the plenary, sharing their real-world experience to provide context to findings.
There were five ‘oral abstract’ sessions each comprising six presentations in 15 minute slots (10 minutes long with 5 minutes for audience questions). The sessions covered empirical research relating to physician and patient decision-making, and quantitative valuation and evaluation. Popular applied areas were prostate cancer, breast cancer and precision medicine.
Running in parallel to the oral presentations, workshops were dealing with methodological issues relating to health economics, shared decision-making and psychology.
Four poster sessions, conveniently surrounding the refreshment table, attracted delegates in the morning, breaks and lunch. SMDM provides some of the best poster sessions: posters are always of high quality which means poster sessions are always well attended.
Great science being discussed at the Monday poster session of #ESMDM18! #ValueBasedHealthCare #PatientsIncluded @SGZ_Leiden pic.twitter.com/rWobq86QAq
— SMDM (@socmdm) June 11, 2018
One of the highlights of the meeting was the plenary presentation by Sir David Spiegelhalter who spoke about the challenges of communicating benefits and harms (often probabilities) impartially. Sir David gave examples from the UK’s national breast screening programme to show how presenting information can change people’s interpretation of risk. He also drew on examples of ‘nudges’ which may involve providing information in a persuasive rather than informing way in order to manipulate behaviour. Sir David gave us examples of materials which had been redesigned to improve both patients’ and clinicians’ understanding of the information of benefits and harms. The session concluded with a short video about how Ugandan primary school children have reading comic strips to help interpret information and find facts about the benefits and harms of healthcare interventions.
David Spiegelhalter @d_spiegel presenting at #ESMDM18 on risk: old vs new style communication on cancer screening pic.twitter.com/5o99cnp5Uf
— Ewout Steyerberg (@ESteyerberg) June 11, 2018
The European SMDM meeting was thoroughly enjoyable and very interesting. The standard of oral and poster presentations was very high, and the environment was very friendly and conducive to networking.
The next North American meeting is in Montreal (October 2018) and the next European meeting will be in 2020 (location to be confirmed).
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