Shaping the Future of Healthcare Value: Lessons from ISPOR Annual
Rob Abbott
CEO of ISPOR • Change Maker and Leader • Passionate about healthcare, health equity, and HEOR •
What if the future of healthcare wasn’t just about discovering new treatments — but about transforming how we decide which ones are most valuable to patients?
At ISPOR 2025, this question wasn’t just theoretical. It was alive in every plenary, pulsing through panels on policy, and echoed in conversations over coffee.
Our major annual North American conference for health economics and outcomes research (HEOR), wrapped up recently in Montreal, Canada. The theme for this year’s conference, “Collaborating to Improve Healthcare Decision Making for All: Expanding HEOR Horizons,” reflects the growing role of HEOR in shaping policy and practice worldwide.
Any ISPOR conference is a veritable feast of plenary sessions, workshops, posters, and networking and it’s a fool’s errand to try and fairly and accurately summarize everything. Instead, I share a few moments that struck me as reflective of where the field of HEOR is moving, with intention, to exert more influence and impact on policy.
The opening plenary session leaned deeply into one of the most consequential issues in pharmaceutical policy: drug price controls and their potential unintended consequences for innovation. Deftly moderated by Gregory Daniel (Eli Lilly), the session brought together an absolutely stellar panel — including Virginia Lee Acha (Merck), Graham Cookson (Office of Health Economics), Sean Sullivan (University of Washington) and Darius Lakdawalla (University of Southern California) — to discuss the ways in which policies like the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act and proposals for international reference pricing — announced in a Presidential Executive Order just two days prior — may shift investment behavior, especially for high-risk, early-stage and small-molecule R&D. The panelists converged around the idea that policymaking must be informed by scientific evidence and that the HEOR community needs to play an active role in shaping future policy. As ISPOR CEO, I pledge to work with our membership and our key stakeholders and partners to make this happen.
A workshop on the global impact of Joint Clinical Assessment (JCA) and the implications of the European Union’s Health Technology Assessment regulation also struck me as a sign of the HEOR community’s growing interest (and ability) to weigh in on consequential regulation. This workshop examined the potential impact of the EU-mandated JCAs on health technology assessment (HTA) systems beyond the EU. Past ISPOR President, Brian O’Rourke called the HTA regulation, “the most influential change we've seen in the HTA community, probably since we started doing HTA” while also acknowledging the “trepidation” around how the regulation is “going to work”.
Finally, a workshop on HEOR and investing moderated by Meng Li (Tufts Medical Center), highlighted the role of health economists in venture capital and investment banking, particularly in navigating the high-risk, high-cost environment of drug development, where only 1–2% of compounds typically reach market approval. This is new territory for HEOR, and I’m thrilled that ISPOR 2025 created some space in which health economists were able to show how their expertise can inform investment decisions and mitigate policy uncertainty.
Ultimately, expanding HEOR horizons is about stepping up to, and across, a threshold to widen the aperture through which the field of health economics and outcomes research views the healthcare landscape. We have much to offer, especially when viewed against a backdrop of disruptive change brought about by affordability challenges, the acceleration of digital health technologies, and the onset of whole health. We will continue to probe what constitutes value in such a changing landscape while engaging with patients, on the one hand, and policymakers on the other.
At ISPOR our foundation in science is strong — and will remain so. The task ahead is to translate that science into relatable HEOR “insights” and bring it to the patient and the policymaker — not as a finished product, necessarily, but as a way of opening space for a new and different conversation about how health economics and outcomes research can make the health and healthcare decisions we are all facing a little clearer and easier to navigate.
ISPOR—The Professional Society for Health Economics and Outcomes Research is here and ready to lead the charge forward.
To learn more, visit ISPOR.org.
Pharmacist, Outcomes Research and Health Economics
3moUnfortunately, what I see is the Phama influence of ISPOR has successfully changed the narrative from a discussion of value to one of maximizing and justifying higher pricing. By pushing more and more of the "benefits" it becomes a self-serving argument to justify higher prices. I miss the days when ISPOR better represented the purchasers (and not the sellers) of therapeutic products. Redefining value sounds like another way of marketing.
A highly accomplished and results-driven PHARMACEUTICAL EXECUTIVE, with strategic planning, research and analytics, and scientific communications experience in US and globally.
3moAs a chronic disease epidemiologist with 25 years of HEOR experience, I am glad to see the increasing use of RWE in regulatory application. I shared my case study on how to use RWD across regions for regulatory approval during the poster tour. I would love the opportunity to further educate others address their regulatory challenges with RWD. Let’s talk!
BNSc, RN, CRNA UN-Approved, MHE
3moThanks for sharing, Rob
Director of Health Research, Innovation and Evaluation. Ministry for Health. Basque Government
3moNot in this type of world Rob Abbott . Otherwise we would be illusive and I don't think you are. Let's sell it in another way and don't mix facts with fakes! This should be kept for another audience.