ISSUE: Advances in health data and information technology are revolutionizing many aspects of health economics and outcomes research, simplifying greatly the conduct of HEOR studies. But will things progress to the point where payers, patients and providers can conduct their own analyses without the expertise of health economists? Bill Marder will describe how machine learning techniques can automate analyses of patient-level databases. Gerry Oster will describe how advances in web-based graphical user interfaces can facilitate economic modeling for those lacking the usual programming expertise. Finally, Mike Drummond will provide the contrarian perspective as to why, despite these advances, health economists as a species will not be dying out anytime soon. OVERVIEW: The past quarter century has witnessed tremendous growth in the field of HEOR and development of methodologic techniques to address the most challenging analytic issues, such as the reduction of bias in retrospective database research and the handling of uncertainty in modeling studies. These methodologic advances have been facilitated by steady increases in computing power, but we are now entering an era in which break-through advances in information technology, data storage, cloud-based computing, and artificial intelligence could combine to obviate the need for analytic expertise to generate health-economic insights for health system stakeholders. An analogue to this is already in place in pharmacoepidemiology, where the FDA’s Sentinel Initiative is generating safety surveillance data on a semi-automated basis. This issue panel will highlight how technological advances are impacting two common HEOR methodologies—economic modeling and retrospective database research—leading to automation of some common tasks in the research and reporting of results. The panelists will discuss whether these advances are elevating the profession of health economics versus rendering it obsolete. The moderator will engage the panelists and solicit audience interaction on the relative merits of the competing viewpoints.