Carole Longson, PhD, MBE has a 30-year executive and international board career in life sciences and is a respected international leader in health technology assessment (HTA). After a career in drug discovery at GSK, she pioneered the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence’s (NICE’s) health technology evaluation programmes as an executive director at NICE for 18 years. She was chief scientific officer at the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry from 2018-2020. She is former President of Health Technology Assessment International and has been a member of the executive committee of the European Network in Health Technology Assessment (EUnetHTA) and Scientific Advisory Committees at the European Commission and the World Health Organization.
She is currently vice chair of the Medicines Discovery Catapult UK and an independent consultant in HTA and market access for the public, private, and investment sectors. Throughout her career, she has championed the public and private sector collaborating to ensure medical innovation benefits patients in a way that is sustainable for healthcare systems.
ISPOR Vision Statement by Carole Longson
I am running for ISPOR President because I would like the opportunity to serve an organization that has helped me vastly in my professional life and has enabled me to develop deep friendships with people across the globe.
I have skills and experience that ISPOR would be able to put to good use to deliver its visionary Strategic Plan. I have worked in academia, in senior roles in pharma R+D and in the public sector including nearly 18 years as an executive at a national health technology assessment (HTA) agency—the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE). During my time at NICE, I applied the methodologies of health economics and developed new HTA and other health technology policy decision processes to inform national decisions on the introduction of new and existing health technologies.
Having been involved in the development of many challenging health technology policy decisions, I know how important it is to use rigorous methodologies to develop a robust evidence base and develop useable decision frameworks for policy making. ISPOR has been at the forefront of using collaborative, multistakeholder approaches in its development of methodology documents and best practice guides and, with its global reach, the impact of this work is profound.
The new Strategic Plan will take ISPOR to the next level of influence, not only with academic researchers and practitioners of HEOR but with the policy makers themselves. I have facilitated many multistakeholder group discissions and chaired committees and advisory boards in the private, public, and not-for-profit sector. This has often required me to facilitate conversations where viewpoints vary widely, and it is not straightforward to reach consensus. Being able to use my skills and experience to contribute to the work of ISPOR, and especially being able to help deliver ISPOR deliver its ambitious new strategy, would be an honour.
On a personal front, people often say that I am an enthusiastic team player who isn’t afraid of hard work but knows when to stop!
If I am elected as President, my priorities would be:
- Building on the work of past presidents to deliver ISPOR’s new Strategic Plan.
- Developing ways to increase the impact of our work in our own community, with other societies and with key global health initiatives.
- Creating initiatives that allow the next generation of people in HEOR to become involved in the work of ISPOR and experience global multistakeholder collaboration.
- Ensuring that ISPOR serves all its members in all geographies.