From defining value to reshaping evidence: What to expect from the ISPOR Europe 2026 plenary sessions

The three plenary sessions at ISPOR Europe 2026 will explore what healthcare systems should value, how resources can be better allocated across those systems and what evidence will be needed to support increasingly complex decisions. Laura Dormer looks ahead to the discussions and what she will be listening for in Vienna.

As healthcare systems face growing pressure to improve outcomes while managing constrained resources, questions around what constitutes value, where that value is created and how it should be demonstrated are becoming increasingly important for the health economics and outcomes research (HEOR) community.

These questions connect the three plenary sessions at ISPOR Europe 2026, the annual European meeting of ISPOR—The Professional Society for Health Economics and Outcomes Research. Thousands of attendees will convene in Vienna, Austria, November 8–11 for four days of research and discussion under the theme “Shaping the Future of Access Through Science and Policy.”

A highlight of every ISPOR meeting, the plenaries are designed to build on one another. The opening session asks whether current approaches capture what really matters in healthcare. The second broadens the focus from individual technologies to the wider health system and the allocation of resources. The final plenary turns to evidence itself, asking how HEOR will need to evolve as the questions facing decision-makers become broader and more complex.

Over the past four years, I’ve attended and covered every plenary at ISPOR’s Annual and European meetings for The Evidence Base. What I’ve found particularly interesting is how the focus has gradually broadened. Alongside questions about how we assess individual technologies, there is now much greater attention on the wider forces shaping healthcare decisions, from health system pressures and changing definitions of value to new sources of evidence and AI. For me, the plenaries provide a useful snapshot of where the HEOR community’s priorities are moving and the questions the field is being asked to address.

As a media partner for ISPOR Europe 2026, we’ll once again be following these discussions in Vienna. Here, I take a closer look at this year’s three plenaries, how they reflect some of the questions now facing the field and what I’ll be particularly interested to hear from each.

Plenary 1: The Science of What Matters: Rethinking Value in Healthcare

Date and time: Monday November 9, 2026, 8:30am–10:00am
Moderator: Sandra Nestler-Parr (BioCryst Pharmaceuticals)
Speakers: Harald Schmidt (Maastricht University) and Sally Lewis (Kintsugi International)

The opening plenary asks a fundamental question for HEOR: are we measuring what really matters when assessing value in healthcare?

The session will consider whether established approaches fully capture outcomes that matter to patients and society, including wellbeing, daily functioning, societal contribution and lived experience, and how broader measures of value could be incorporated into policy and health technology assessment (HTA).

This builds on a question we have explored previously on The Evidence Base: how can economic evaluation move beyond traditional measures to capture wider patient and societal value?

Why I’m looking forward to this session

I’m particularly interested in how the discussion moves from recognizing broader dimensions of value to incorporating them into decision-making. This reflects some of the perspectives Mark Sculpher shared in his recent conversation with Patti Peeples for our Patti’s People series. I’ll be interested to hear different viewpoints on how broader outcomes should be measured, weighted and balanced alongside established measures of value.

Plenary 2: We Optimize Treatments—But How Do We Optimize the System?

Date and time: Tuesday November 10, 2026, 8:30am–10:00am
Moderator: Rasmus Gjesing (WHO Europe)
Speakers: Ricardo Baptista Leite, Jakub Dvoracek and Carole Longson (University of Manchester)

The second plenary turns the focus from individual technologies to the wider healthcare system. While HEOR has developed sophisticated methods for evaluating medicines and other technologies, existing care pathways, delivery models and low-value activities can receive less scrutiny.

The session will ask whether HEOR should play a greater role in identifying where value is being lost across the system and consider how evidence can support better resource allocation. Speakers will explore barriers to change, alongside opportunities to improve care delivery and redirect resources towards activities that deliver greater value.

Why I’m looking forward to this session

This session raises a question that I think is particularly important for the HEOR community: are we applying our most sophisticated approaches to all the areas where they could make a difference?

This connects closely with discussions we recently followed at the recent 2026 RWE4Decisions Symposium, where stakeholders considered how evidence generation can better respond to the needs of healthcare decision-makers. Discussions around evidence gaps, data infrastructure and the alignment of evidence generation with decision-making highlighted that producing better evidence is only part of the challenge. Ensuring that evidence can be used to inform decisions across healthcare systems is equally important.

I’ll be interested to hear what a more system-level role for HEOR could look like, particularly how evidence can identify low-value activity and support difficult decisions around disinvestment and reallocation of resources.

Plenary 3: Fit for Purpose: What HEOR Evidence Must Become

Date and time: Wednesday November 11, 2026, 11:30am–1:00pm
Moderator: Malina Müller (WifOR Institute)
Speakers: Nick Guldemond (Leiden University Medical Center), Marie Gerstrøm Kristiansen (Amgros) and Nirosha Lederer (AstraZeneca)

The final plenary looks at how HEOR evidence may need to evolve as the questions facing healthcare decision-makers become broader and more complex. The session will consider evidence spanning population health, system resilience, sustainability and societal outcomes, alongside the growing role of AI and advanced analytics in evidence generation.

Bringing together payer, clinical, evidence-generation and data science perspectives, the panel will examine what “fit-for-purpose” HEOR evidence should look like and consider how more integrated evidence ecosystems could support increasingly complex decisions while retaining the trust of those using the evidence.

Why I’m looking forward to this session

I recently attended DIA’s 2026 Real-World Evidence Conference, where the importance of combining fit-for-purpose data with rigorous methods and transparency featured strongly in discussions. I’m looking forward to hearing additional perspectives on this and considering how these principles translate to the wider HEOR landscape as evidence needs evolve.

AI adds another dimension and as its role in evidence generation grows, I’ll be particularly interested in how the panel balances the potential for greater efficiency with the need to maintain transparency, scientific judgment and methodological rigor.

The Evidence Base at ISPOR Europe 2026

I’ll be attending all three plenary sessions in Vienna and will be reporting back on The Evidence Base on the key themes, debates and questions emerging from each discussion.

Keep an eye on The Evidence Base throughout ISPOR Europe 2026 for our latest coverage from Vienna. Follow us on LinkedIn and register for free to keep up with our coverage before, during and after the meeting.