ISSUE: The COVID-19 pandemic has altered the health care system and created a “new normal” situation comprising of challenges, of which few include- need for contactless care, fear of contagion, health system capacity issues, and loss of insurance coverage. Addressing these new challenges along with existing ones, many professional organizations and societies might have to re-evaluate their strategies around treatment and management guidelines and formulary decisions. Given that COVID-19 related data is limited, expert elicitation methods including the Sheffield Expert Elicitation Framework (SHELF) and Delphi are important study methodologies that can help systematically address these challenges by eliciting expert opinions and developing consensus statements.

OVERVIEW: The panel will debate the importance of using expert elicitation methods to address COVID-19 pandemic related challenges. Specifically, the panel will discuss the following questions:

• What are the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic on existing treatment and management guidelines and formulary decisions?
• How and what expert elicitation methods help develop consensus statements to address these challenges?
• What are advantages and limitations of expert elicitation methods?

Dr. Veeranki, a clinical epidemiologist with expertise in expert elicitation methods will moderate this panel. He will outline the importance of expert elicitation methods, their use in the past and highlight recent research that used these methods to address uncertainties in rare diseases. Dr. O’Hagan will discuss the development of SHELF and its application in quantifying expert opinions. Dr. Fick will describe how expert elicitation methods could be used to inform clinical decision-making and research, providing examples during COVID-19. Dr. Latimer will debate how these methods could be used to inform health technology assessments and formulary decisions during COVID-19. The panel will begin with Dr. Veeranki’s 5-minute introduction, followed by a 10-minute talk by each panelist, and a 10-minute moderated group discussion along with a 15-minute Q&A with the audience.