ISSUE: Healthcare systems around the world face considerable challenges such as controlling budgets and prices and improving allocative and systems efficiency and equity; against a backdrop of growing demand and expectations that healthcare should use better outcomes and better meet patient preferences. Fundamental questions about what ‘value’ and ‘value for money’ mean remain unresolved. What does all this mean for the field of HEOR? How will the HEOR methods and practices need to evolve and adapt?

OVERVIEW: Finn Børlum Kristensen will provide a brief overview of the definition of HEOR and the methods it has traditionally pursued (5 minutes). The panelists will each provide a contrasting perspective on the future of HEOR (12 minutes). Nancy Devlin will argue that much more attention should be paid to wider HE issues relating to incentives and behaviors in the system and to ways of enhancing performance (in terms of both allocative efficiency and equity) of the systems for funding and providing healthcare within which HTA of new technologies is undertaken. Ross Maclean will focus on OR, arguing that HEOR needs to do more to facilitate measurement of a range of metrics that measure value for consumers and decision-makers including patient preferences, patient reported experience (PREMs) and patient reported outcomes (PROMs). Andy Briggs will argue that a call to arms is required for health economists to engage with their non-economist colleagues to help them understand the importance of rigorous economic approaches to defining value. In the discussion (15 minutes) audience participation in debating the direction of HEOR will be encouraged. The panel presents an opportunity to address the importance of HEOR relative to both research and decision making and discuss a broader perspective of HEOR relative to healthcare systems, pathways, etc. The session will share current ISPOR leadership discussions on HEOR strategy and discuss a HEOR research agenda.