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Peter Neumann ScD,
Harvard School of
Public Health, Boston,MA, USA
2005-2006 ISPOR President
Thank you very much, Lieven, and good morning to all of you. Let
me start with a few thank yous. Lieven Annemans first: I want to
thank you for your exceptional service to ISPOR over the past
year. Under your leadership, ISPOR has continued to grow and
prosper. On a personal note, it has been a true pleasure working
with you.
I also want to take the opportunity to thank Jaime Caro and his
entire team for their hard work. We have had a fantastic meeting
here in Washington DC, and we all want to thank you very much
for your efforts. We have already thanked the staff of ISPOR,
but let me just add a personal word. A great pillar of ISPOR’s
strength is the wonderful and hard working staff led by the
truly amazing Marilyn Dix Smith. Marilyn, I want to thank you
for all you have done. Finally, I want to thank Milt Weinstein
for his unfailingly good mentorship over the past 17 years.
As you know, this is ISPOR’s 10th anniversary year. We can look
back on a decade of growth and accomplishment. It is an exciting
time. We have a strong society and we can be proud of many
achievements: our ever improving annual meetings, with over 1000
attendees in North America and Europe; plans underway for a
second Asia Pacific meeting to be held in Shanghai in March
2006; and our thriving journal, Value in Health, under the
excellent stewardship of Josephine Mauskopf. Most importantly,
we have a diverse, energetic, engaged, and growing membership of
over 2,700 strong worldwide.
Looking ahead, we face great opportunities and also some
challenges. I would like to highlight three priority areas on
which I strongly believe ISPOR should focus in the years ahead,
and on which I plan to work hard during my term as ISPOR
President. These areas draw upon recommendations that emerged
from the Vision 2010 Committee Report issued last year, and
continue upon themes that Lieven Annemans pursued during his
term as president.
Excellence
A first area pertains to excellence. It is critical that we
constantly strive to improve the quality of our society -- our
annual meetings, our journal, and the myriad activities of our
organization. Towards this end, I believe we should renew our
commitment towards pursuing excellence. Indeed we should be
relentless about it. And we should always strive to measure the
outcome of our efforts.
With this in mind, let me mention several new ways we are
beginning to do this. First, we have established an abstract
quality assurance task force to evaluate the research abstract
and selection process. The goal is to improve the quality of
abstracts presented at our meeting. Second, our journal Value in
Health will receive its first impact factor score this summer
[1]. This score represents an important way in which we can
monitor the quality of the journal and its progress over time.
There are many other things we can do, including strengthening
our task forces, our special interest groups, and our student
and regional chapters.
Internationalize
The ‘I’ in ISPOR stands, of course, for international. And ISPOR
should continue to expand its horizons. With multiple cultures,
languages, and geographic boundaries, international
organizations can be challenging. But they are becoming ever
more vital in our increasingly global society. I believe it is
absolutely essential that we continue to work hard on expanding
ISPOR’s reach. Our meetings in North America, Europe and Asia,
and our student and regional chapters around the globe, our
diverse membership all demonstrate our ability to forge a
successful international organization. I believe there is more
that we can do. There are many growth opportunities across the
globe, particularly in Asia, but also in Central and South
America, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa. We will
pursue new chapters around the globe, monitor our progress, and
share with you our results in the months ahead.
Communication and Outreach
Third, I believe there is more we can accomplish in spreading
the word about the good work that we do.
In terms of communication, I believe there is more we can do to
engage the media through work presented at our meetings, and in
our journal. As an example at this Annual Meeting: a public
awareness initiative. Abstract reviewers indicate whether the
results of a study will contribute to the health care
improvement of our society and whether the public should be made
aware of the study results. In the future, we will use this
information to identify and motivate authors to prepare press
releases for their studies. In support of this objective, the
ISPOR staff has prepared an easy-to-follow template for
preparation of press releases.
In terms of outreach, much more can be done to reach out to
payers and to medical device and biotechnology companies, and to
partner with other associations in strategic ways as
opportunities arise. You will be hearing a lot more about all of
this in the months ahead. If we are successful, the work of
ISPOR will become known in the far reaches of the globe.
Now let me tell you about some great things to come for our
society over the next year. In November of this year we have
ISPOR’s 8th Annual European Congress in Florence, Italy. In
addition to the wonderful charms of Florence and the high
quality of our Congresses, we will have a wine tasting at a
medieval castle north of Florence, which I’m told, dates to the
14th century. (We hope that it is the castle and not the wine
that dates to the 14th century.) The castle is said to be
haunted by ghosts. We hope to see all of you there. Voglio
verdere tutti qui prossima Noviembre a Firenze. … For those of
you who don’t speak Italian, as I do, that means roughly, “I
want to see all of you in Florence in November”.
In March of 2006, I am very pleased to tell you we will have
ISPOR’s Second Asia- Pacific Conference in the beautiful city of
Shanghai.…
For those of you who don’t speak Chinese, this means, roughly,
“Let’s get together for the Second Asia Pacific Conference in
Shanghai.”
And, of course, for next year’s Annual Meeting, we go back to
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where it all began for ISPOR. We are
planning an exciting program. Joanna Siegel is the general chair
of next year’s Meeting and we will be working hard on that
meeting over the coming year. We look forward to seeing all of
you there.
Let me close by saying that the future success of ISPOR, of
course, depends on you, our members. Taking our society forward
will require vision, hard work, and the collective ideas and
energy of all of you. There are many opportunities to
participate: special interest groups, task forces, committees,
and so forth. Let us know where and how you want to get
involved.
I am very excited about the opportunity to serve the
society as president. I know many of you, I look forward to
getting to know many more of you, and I look forward to working
for all of you to make our organization ever better. Thank you
very much.
REFERENCES
[1] In June, Value in Health received the outstanding score of
3.657, leading all other journals in the Health Care Sciences
and Services and Health Policy and Services category.
Messages from the
ISPOR Presidents
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