PURPOSE: How can development, use, and maintenance of open-source models be encouraged in the absence of financial (and other) incentives around intellectual property? This workshop will consider alternatives and financial approaches in the context of open-source modelling, as well as advantages and disadvantages of each.

DESCRIPTION: Open-source economic models have been slow to gain ground. While few stakeholders are explicitly opposed to open-source modelling, there remain several barriers to adoption. One is the financial aspect of developing and sustaining these models. A closely related one is the ownership of the intellectual property. The discussants will present the opportunities and challenges of developing and maintaining open-source models. Due to their nature as a public good, it can be difficult to create financial incentives to encourage the development and adoption of these models. Dr. Chapman (10 min.) will moderate the discussion and provide a brief background of the issue, as well as pose key questions to the discussants. Dr. Arnold (10 min.) will discuss the history around the call for health economic models to be available as open-source, and learnings from the recently-conducted ISPOR Open-Source Model SIG survey around barriers to their development. Dr. Caro (10 min.) will discuss the opportunities and challenges of building these models and making them freely available based on examples from his experience. Dr. Sadatsafavi (10 min.) will discuss the concepts of transparency versus accessibility, potential solutions to preserve intellectual property of model developers while enabling stakeholders to gain access to the output of such models, and the need for a common standard for interrogating models in addition to simply making their code available. Time will be reserved for audience questions.