The 2019 annual meeting of the Society of Medical Decision Making (SMDM) took place in Portland, Oregon, on the 20-23 October. Two members of the DMC, Natalia Kunst and Gabrielle Jongeneel were visiting the conference. The theme of this year was “Many Views on Value”.

Natalia Kunst and Gabrielle Jongeneel attended sessions with the emphasis on “Modelling and simulations”, “Clinical decision making and appropriate care”, “advanced methods for decision making”, “Decision making processes and strategies”, “Value of information”, and many more. With this broad range of topics, SMDM provided an opportunity to exchange practical challenges, new knowledge, and a broader view on our work. There was also a really interesting symposia called “Value for whom? Choice and consequences of perspective in economic evaluation”, in which Natalia Kunst participated as a panellist. Natalia Kunst and the other panel speakers debate the practicality of incorporating different perspectives and how standardize the use of such techniques in health economic evaluations.

Our team also got the opportunity to present their work in the poster sessions at the SMDM conference: “Real-World recurrence Rates of Colorectal Cancer over Time”, and “Practical Considerations for the Efficient Computation of the Expected Value of Sample Information to Prioritize Research in Health Care” by Natalia Kunst and “Model-Based Effectiveness and Cost-Effectiveness of Personalized Selection Strategies for Adjuvant Chemotherapy in Stage II Colon Cancer” by Gabrielle Jongeneel. These presentations led to excellent discussions with other experts in the field. The poster presentation of Gabrielle Jongeneel won the Lee B. Lusted student prize in the category Applied Health Economics.

More information on the conference and full abstracts can be found at https://smdm.org/meeting/41st-annual-north-american-meeting