Missed iHEA 2019? Or were you there but could not make it to all of the amazing sessions? Stay tuned for my conference highlights!
iHEA started on Saturday 13th with pre-congress sessions on fascinating research as well as more prosaic topics, such as early-career networking sessions with senior health economists. All attendees got a super useful plastic bottle – great idea iHEA team!
The conference proper launched on Sunday evening with the brilliant plenary session by Raj Chetty from Harvard University.
Monday morning started bright and early with the thought-provoking session on validation of CE models. It was chaired and discussed by Stefan Lhachimi and featured presentations by Isaac Corro Ramos, Talitha Feenstra and Salah Ghabri. I’m pleased to see that validation is coming to the forefront of current topics! Clearly, we need to do better in validating our models and documenting code, but we’re on the right track and engaged in making this happen.
Next up, the superb session on the societal perspective for cost-effectiveness analysis. It was an all-star cast with Mark Sculpher, Simon Walker, Susan Griffin, Peter Neumann, Lisa Robinson, and Werner Brouwer. I’ve live-tweeted it here.
The case was expertly made that taking a single sector perspective can be misleading when evaluating policies with cross-sectoral effects, hence the impact inventory by Simon and colleagues is a useful tool to guide the choice of sectors to include. At the same time, we should be mindful of the requirements of the decision-maker for whom CEA is intended. This was a compelling session, which will definitely set the scene for much more research to come.
After a tasty lunch (well done catering team!), I headed to the session on evaluations using non-randomised data. The presenters included Maninie Molatseli, Fernando Antonio Postali, James Love-Koh and Taufik Hidayat, on case studies from South Africa, Brazil and Indonesia. Marc Suhrcke chaired. I really enjoyed hearing about the practicalities of applying econometric methods to estimate treatment effects of system wide policies. And James’s presentation was a great application of distributional cost-effectiveness analysis.
I was on the presenter’s chair next, discussing the challenges in implementing policies in the southwest quadrant of the CE plane. This session was chaired by Anna Vassall and discussed by Gesine Meyer-Rath. Jack Dowie started by convincingly arguing that the decision rule should be the same regardless of where in the CE plane the policy falls. David Bath and Sergio Torres-Rueda presented fascinating case studies of south west policies. And I argued that the barrier was essentially a problem of communication (presentation available here). An energetic discussion followed and showed that, even in our field, the matter is far from settled.
The day finished with the memorial session for the wonderful Alan Maynard and Uwe Reinhardt, both of whom did so much for health economics. It was a beautiful session, where people got together to share incredible stories from these health economics heroes. And if you’d like to know more, both Alan and Uwe have published books here and here.
Tuesday started with the session on precision medicine, chaired by Dean Regier, and featuring Rosalie Viney, Chris McCabe and Stuart Peacock. Rather than slides, the screen was filled with a video of a cosy fireplace, inviting the audience to take part in the discussion.
Under debate was whether precision medicine is a completely different type of technology, with added benefits over and above improvement to health, and needing a different CE framework. The panellists were absolutely outstanding in debating the issues! Although I understand the benefits beyond health that these technologies can offer, I side with the view that, like with other technologies, value is about whether the added benefits are worth the losses given the opportunity cost.
My final session of the day was by the great Mike Drummond, comparing how HTA has influenced the uptake of new anticancer drugs in Spain versus England (summary in thread below). Mike and colleagues found that positive recommendations do increase utilisation, but the magnitude of change differs by country and region. The work is ongoing in checking that utilisation has been picked up accurately in the routine data sources.
The conference dinner was at the Markthalle, with plenty of drinks and loads of international food to choose from. I had to have an early night given that I was presenting at 8:30 the next morning. Others, though, enjoyed the party until the early hours!
Indeed, Wednesday started with my session on cost-effectiveness analysis of diagnostic tests. Alison Smith presented on her remarkable work on measurement uncertainty while Hayley Jones gave a masterclass on her new method for meta-analysis of test accuracy across multiple thresholds. I presented on the CEA of test sequences (available here). Simon Walker and James Buchanan added insightful points as discussants. We had a fantastically engaged audience, with great questions and comments. It shows that the CEA of diagnostic tests is becoming a hugely important topic.
Sadly, some other morning sessions were not as well attended. One session, also on CEA, was even cancelled due to lack of audience! For future conferences, I’d suggest scheduling the sessions on the day after the conference dinner a bit later, as well as having fewer sessions to choose from.
Next up on my agenda was the exceptional session on equity, chaired by Paula Lorgelly, and with presentations by Richard Cookson, Susan Griffin and Ijeoma Edoka. I was unable to attend, but I have watched it at home via YouTube (from 1:57:10)! That’s right, some sessions were live streamed and are still available via the iHEA website. Do have a look!
My last session of the conference was on end-of-life care, with Charles Normand chairing, discussed by Helen Mason, Eric Finkelstein, and Mendwas Dzingina, and presentations by Koonal Shah, Bridget Johnson and Nikki McCaffrey. It was a really thought-provoking session, raising questions on the value of interventions at the end-of-life compared to at other stages of the life course.
Lastly, the outstanding plenary session by Lise Rochaix and Joseph Kutzin on how to translate health economics research into policy. Lise and Joseph had pragmatic suggestions and insightful comments on the communication of health economics research to policy makers. Superb! Also available on the live stream here (from 06:09:44).
iHEA 2019 was truly an amazing conference. Expertly organised, well thought-out and with lots of interesting sessions to choose from. iHEA 2021 in Cape Town is firmly in my diary!
