There is growing interest in increasing the use and relevance of patient preferences studies among decision makers in health. Our task force focused on developing a new framework that would: 1) be applicable to the wide variety of preference methods; 2) identify key domains that would guide researchers and other stakeholders in making patient preference studies more useful to decision makers; and 3) detail important questions that would guide researchers conducting preference studies and those critically appraising them.

The framework spans 5 domains for conducting patient preference studies to increase the use and relevance of these studies to decision makers: i. The context – A complete understanding of how decision makers function, how decisions are made, and how studies on patient preferences may be received and used. ii. The purpose – A clear articulation of how the study on patient preferences responds to decision makers’ needs and how the findings are expected to inform decision making. iii. The population – A thorough consideration of who the findings of the study will be applied to (directly or indirectly) and the intended and unintended consequences for those people. iv. The method – A selection of method/s to study patient preferences that reflects the needs, wants, and capabilities of decision makers, patients, and other stakeholders. v. The impact – A proactive effort both to ensure that the study findings can inform decision making and to measure if and how they influenced decision makers and decision-making.

Speakers will discuss: 1) a detailed overview of the ISPOR Framework; 2) compare it to different preference elicitation methods’ frameworks/recommendations such as IMI PREFER; 3) it’s application to a decision-relevant case study and 4) the decision-maker’s perspective. Feedback on bridging the gap between methods and applications will be part of the polling and moderated Q&A session.