We were delighted to have a team of 22 colleagues attend ISPOR Europe 2025 in Glasgow this November, where we came together with other global healthcare leaders, researchers and decision makers to explore the theme of “Powering Value and Access Through Patient-Centred Collaboration.”
Our spotlight topics included patient centricity and engagement, Joint Clinical Assessment (JCA), and the potential for technical innovation and artificial intelligence (AI) to facilitate advances in health economics and outcomes research (HEOR). We were pleased to contribute 2 podium presentations and 13 research posters of our own to the conference, including two Top 5% Finalists for the ISPOR Europe 2025 Research Presentation Awards. Explore all of our published research.
Centring patients in healthcare decision-making remained a strong focus at this year’s conference, reflected by its theme: “Powering Value and Access Through Patient-Centered Collaboration”. As this stance is increasingly formalised, with regulatory bodies now publishing guidelines that include recommendations relating to patient-experience data, topics for discussion are moving away from whether healthcare decision-making should be patient-centred, towards how this is best achieved.
We summarise where patient-centricity in decision-making is currently proving impactful, what next steps for translating talk into action could involve, and ask whether the actions taken to date have truly translated into better representation of patient preference and experience within decision-making.
Following on from ISPOR 2025 (Montreal) in May, the use of AI in literature reviews remained a headline topic amongst the posters, panels and presentations at ISPOR Europe 2025. We’re seeing a more mature ecosystem, with literature review platforms and products increasingly claiming the capability of plugging into databases, generating evidence syntheses, and evolving with ongoing updates. Regulators and HTA agencies are becoming more central to the dialogue too.
With all this hype, how can HEOR teams filter through the noise to understand where AI is truly adding value, and where it is not yet living up to the claims? We summarise the key talking points on AI in literature reviews at the conference, from HTA body insights to choosing the best app for your literature review needs, providing our own take on the status and road ahead.
While the potential of AI to accelerate evidence synthesis is becoming clear, progress in the fields of value dossiers and economic modelling is lagging behind. Overall, it is proposed that AI can deliver meaningful time savings when used appropriately, but governance, transparency, and human oversight are essential to maintain quality, credibility, and ultimately acceptability. Can these challenges be overcome and efficiencies brought to value dossier and economic model development?
We summarise key discussions from ISPOR Europe 2025 and suggest where AI adds value now in the broader HEOR space, and where further research is needed to reach the potential of AI outside of literature reviews.
The EU JCA was again a key theme at this year’s ISPOR Europe. The agenda was full of issue panels and presentations promising to provide practical recommendations or to ‘demystify’ the process since its official launch in January 2025.
We summarise the key themes and research highlights for us and, using the ‘Gartner hype cycle’, illustrate how industry could be crossing the peak of inflated expectations and entering the trough of disillusionment when it comes to the JCA.
Recent advances in indirect treatment comparison (ITC) methods have addressed common pitfalls, such as the between-study similarity or proportional hazards assumptions failing. We saw an emphasis on approaches for methods selection presented in research across ISPOR Europe 2025; we were also pleased to contribute our own research on differences in ITC acceptance across Europe, and early ITC planning for JCAs.
One key takeaway was that the increased toolkit of ITC methods now needs better associated instructions to help investigators with selection of the most suitable ITCs for HTA submissions, including JCA. We reflect on what was discussed at ISPOR in terms of which methods are currently on the table, what we currently see across Europe in terms of method selection and acceptance, and discuss how proactive planning with the ITC toolkit at hand will be essential.
Capturing environmental sustainability within value and access was a hot topic at ISPOR Europe 2025, but exactly how and where to incorporate environmental sustainability into such discussions remains far from clear. The suitability of capturing environmental impacts within HTAs versus procurement decisions was one key area of debate, and stakeholders also cautioned that robust frameworks for assessing the environmental impact of new interventions are still evolving. As such, environmental considerations may initially act as a supplementary input rather than a key driver of decision making. We synthesise the main themes and key research presented at the conference, framing where consensus is forming and where gaps remain.
The HEMA Draft Report proposes expanding HTA’s benefit function to include elements beyond costs and QALYs (e.g., productivity, process benefits, equity). It outlines three guiding principles, Relevance, Valuation, Opportunity Costs, and distinguishes in-scope vs. out-of-scope elements, noting challenges like risk attitudes and double-counting. The central question is whether these novel analyses should influence HTA practice; if pursued, they must be applied consistently to both new and existing therapies, and HTA bodies will need clearer guidance and greater standardisation.
If you would like any further information about our presence at ISPOR Europe 2025 and learnings from attending the conference, please get in touch, or contact Alex Porteous, UK Head of HTA. Alex created this report on behalf of Costello Medical. The views/opinions expressed here are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Costello Medical’s clients/affiliated partners
