This year, the 11th edition of the lowlands Health Economic Study Group (lolaHESG) conference took place in Almen. This conference focusses on research in the field of health technology assessment (HTA). Seven experts of the DMC team attended the lolaHESG.

Key note speaker

The keynote lecture was given by Prof. Dr. Erwin Hans. Prof. Hans applies techniques from the operations research field, such as the queuing theory, to the hospital setting. Many solutions from this field may sound counter intuitive to clinicians, but make sense from the mathematical perspective. Such solutions can significantly reduce waiting times for patients, and spread the workload for clinicians more evenly.

Discusssing papers

The lolaHESG conference uses a special design. Attendants of the conference are encouraged to submit a draft paper, which is not discussed by the author, but by a discussant selected by the organization of the conference. Discussants present a summary of the paper selected for them, and add some discussion points at the end of the presentation.

The resulting discussions of papers are extremely helpful to authors, because it will highlight new or different points of view. In addition, discussants and the audience can come up with interesting applications or ideas. This approach can improve our papers and the quality of research in our scientific community.

Our submissions

The DMC team submitted two draft papers to the conference: “Cost-effectiveness of Stereotactic Body Radiation Therapy versus Video Assisted Thoracic Surgery in stage I Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer: A modeling study.” by Wolff et al.  and “Model-based effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of personalized selection strategies for adjuvant chemotherapy in stage II colon cancer.” by Jongeneel et al. Both papers were well received and all the constructive feedback will be incorporated. We will post an update once these papers are published.

lolaHESG 2020

Next year the lolaHESG conference will be organized by the DMC and our colleagues from Groningen. We are looking forward to seeing all of you there!