Recommendations Extend Beyond Technology Assessment to Health Policy and Health Systems
Lawrenceville, NJ, USA—October 15, 2026—Value in Health, the official journal of ISPOR—The Professional Society for Health Economics and Outcomes Research, announced today the publication of a new commentary that calls for expanding the role of health economics and outcomes research (HEOR) and increasing its impact on real-world decision making.
The commentary, “Toward a Vision for Health Economics and Outcomes Research: From Technology Appraisal to Health Policy Science,” was written by ISPOR member experts involved in the society’s Health Science Policy Council.
The authors envision HEOR playing a broader role, extending beyond the value of individual drugs and technologies to address questions about healthcare delivery, resource allocation, and health policy.
Among the research and policy priorities outlined in the commentary, the authors call for:
- Bringing HEOR expertise into broad evidence generation and policy design earlier so evidence better addresses decision makers’ needs.
- Expanding HEOR beyond product assessment in care delivery, prevention, and health system performance.
- Advancing methods that better account for uncertainty, risk, equity, and long-term effects on healthcare innovation and population health.
- Evaluating which evidence formats and communication strategies most effectively influence real-world decisions.
- Integrating HEOR evidence into decision processes, incentives, and accountability structures so that it actively influences behavior.
“Taken together, these shifts reposition HEOR from a technology-appraisal discipline toward a core component of health policy design and system stewardship,” lead author Newell E. McElwee, PharmD, MSPH, McElwee Consulting, LLC Philadelphia, PA and Tufts University, Boston, MA, and colleagues, wrote.
The commentary builds on visioning work begun in 2021 by a working group of ISPOR’s Health Science Policy Council and a white paper finalized in 2024. The earlier work explored opportunities to increase HEOR’s relevance and impact. The new commentary sharpens the implications for research and policy and connects the vision to ISPOR’s Strategic Plan 2030, with a focus on how HEOR can help decision makers navigate competing goals such as value, affordability, access, and innovation.
“Explicitly characterizing these trade-offs—particularly between short-run affordability and long-run innovation—should be a central contribution of HEOR going forward, supporting transparent, evidence-informed deliberation across stakeholders,” McElwee and colleagues wrote.
The authors point to a persistent gap between increasingly sophisticated HEOR methods and their practical influence on healthcare decisions. Evidence may arrive too late, fail to address decision makers’ needs, or lack credibility and usability at the point of a policy choice. Fragmented financing and competing stakeholder interests can further limit its influence, while highly technical communication can make HEOR difficult for nonspecialists to understand.
Central to the authors’ vision is a “whole health” perspective that broadens the focus beyond individual technologies. The authors describe HEOR as an integrated evidence and decision science supporting long-term population health and well-being while accounting for real-world constraints such as limited budgets, health system capacity, equity, political feasibility, and incentives for future innovation.
The authors note that hospital care, physician services, and long-term care account for much of health spending and argue that applying HEOR more systematically to care delivery, payment reform, service organization, public health, and prevention could help address inefficiency, variation, and low-value care.
The vision also has global implications as HEOR methods spread across health systems. In low- and middle-income countries, greater attention is needed to local capacity, context, and the adaptability of evidence.
“The future of HEOR depends on how effectively our science shapes decisions,” said Laura T. Pizzi, PharmD, MPH, ISPOR Chief Science Officer. “This commentary challenges us to extend our reach beyond technology appraisal into how healthcare is designed, delivered, and financed. That ambition is central to ISPOR’s Strategic Plan 2030: advancing rigorous science and ensuring it translates into better policy, better care, and better health.”
Click to access the full-text article.
To cite this article: McElwee NE, Willke RJ, Earnshaw S, Garrison LP Jr, Pizzi LT; HEOR Visioning Group. Toward a vision for health economics and outcomes research: from technology appraisal to health policy science. Value Health. Published online June 19, 2026. doi:10.1016/j.jval.2026.05.012.
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ABOUT ISPOR
ISPOR—The Professional Society for Health Economics and Outcomes Research (HEOR), is an international, multistakeholder, nonprofit dedicated to advancing HEOR excellence to improve decision making for health globally. The Society is the leading source for scientific conferences, peer-reviewed and MEDLINE®-indexed publications, good practices guidance, education, collaboration, and tools/resources in the field.
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ABOUT VALUE IN HEALTH
Value in Health (ISSN 1098-3015) is an international, indexed journal that publishes original research and health policy articles that advance the field of health economics and outcomes research to help healthcare leaders make evidence-based decisions. The journal’s current impact factor score is 6.0 and its 5-year impact factor score is 5.7. Value in Health is ranked 5th of 124 journals in Health Policy and Services, 12th of 185 journals in Health Care Sciences & Services, and 37th of 617 journals in Economics. Value in Health is a monthly publication that circulates to more than 55,000 readers around the world.
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