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President’s Fireside Chat: Monitoring the Quality of Our Society
Peter Neumann ScD, ISPOR 2005-2006 President,
Professor, Tufts University School of Medicine, Director, Center
for the Evaluation of Value and Risk in Health Institute for
Clinical Research and Health Policy Studies
ISPOR has come a long way since its inception in 1995. In
terms of membership growth and attendance at annual meetings,
ISPOR has been an unqualified success. As Figure 1 shows,
membership has grown to almost 3,000. During 2005, membership
increased a phenomenal 28%. Annual meeting attendance has grown
rapidly as well (Figures 2 & 3). What about the quality of our
organization and our work? This is a more difficult question,
though one I’ll try to address in this column.
Quality
In the early years of ISPOR, one heard regularly about the need
to improve the quality of the work presented at the annual
meetings. I believe we have come a long way since then: the
abstracts and presentations have improved substantially; the
workshops and issues panels cover key topical issues and are led
by noted leaders in the field; and the plenary sessions are
generally very good and sometimes exceptional (10th Annual
International Meeting speakers, Daniel Kahneman and David Eddy
are examples). Still, it is critical that we constantly strive
to improve the quality of our society, and that we try to
measure and monitor our efforts. Here are a few ways in which
ISPOR is doing this and some ideas about how we might do even
better. This is by no means an exhaustive list and I would
welcome other suggestions. Abstract Quality Assurance Task
Force
ISPOR has established an abstract quality assurance task force
to evaluate the research abstracts presented at the annual
meetings, and our selection process. The idea is to improve the
quality of abstracts by implementing new evaluation procedures,
and perhaps new ways to provide feedback to presenters as well
as to those who have had abstracts rejected.
Impact Factor For
Value In Health
ISPOR’s journal, Value in Health (ViH), has only been in
existence since 1998. In 2001, Value in Health became indexed in
Medline (an achievement in itself) and in August 2005, it
received its first impact factor score, an outstanding 3.657 for
2004, leading all other journals in the Health Care Sciences and
Services and Health Policy and Services category. This score
demonstrates that ViH has become an important source of
information for researchers in our field, and it gives us
another means to monitor our progress. In addition, I believe we
should analyze and publicize the most-cited articles. Meeting
Evaluations
Only about 10-15% of meeting attendees complete evaluation
forms, and likely they do not constitute a representative
sample. Still, they are instructive. As a former general chair
of an Annual Meeting, and now as President, I have had several
chances to review evaluations. Some attendees have nice things
to say. Most have complaints or suggestions for improvements.
Many people were not fond of the Arlington, VA location. We’ve
changed that. Some want more (and better) coffee at the breaks-
we’re trying. Some have complained the certain workshops are
used as promotional vehicles for speakers. We’re aware of it and
are working to end this practice. Others are more specific about
content of the meeting. Please, keep these comments coming. We
need to work harder to increase response rates. Short Course
Evaluations
Attendance at the short courses offered at ISPOR’s Annual
Meetings and Congresses has also risen dramatically. We also
collect evaluation forms on the courses, and these, too are
instructive. We use these evlautations to improve the course
topics and to amend the content. ISPOR Website
ISPOR’s website receives about 1,000,000 hits a month. That’s
impressive. It also gives us another measure of how we’re doing.
People come to our website for many reasons with the employment
section as the most popular.
Here are two other ideas for monitoring our progress:
Membership Retention Rates
Membership has been growing steadily. That says that we’re doing
something right in attracting new people. ISPOR also implemented
an aggressive recruitment program last year, which may explain
the dramatic increase in membership in 2005.
We need to monitor our performance in retaining members.
Participation Of Membership
My impression is that ISPOR is different than many other
organizations of its kind in the number and diversity of
opportunities to participate: the numerous special interest
groups, task forces, regional chapters, student chapters, and
many committees.
To my knowledge, we’ve never tried to quantify the participation
of members but it would be useful to do it.Ultimately, the
quality of our work depends, of course, on the membership. I
look forward to sharing more data with you on how we’re doing
and hearing from you on other ways we can achieve excellence. | 
