May 2025 HTA ESIG meeting - minutes

· May 6, 2025

SIG meetings

Date/time

06-May-2025 13:00-14:00 CET

Agenda

  1. Admin updates
  2. Member/subteam/guest driven topic (25min)
    • SIG leadership model (10min Anders/Arthur/Katrin )
    • IQWiG methods paper Version 8.0 (15min/Christine)
  3. EU HTA – info sharing and updates (20min)
    • Best practices PICO addressability (20min/Lara/Dave)
  4. Events and conferences (10min)
    • PSI 2025 (10min/PSI 2025 subteam)
  5. AOB (5min)
    • (Topic will be pushed to June meeting: HTA ESIG track to drive work on strengthening the evidence of correlation of non-OS endpoints (PROs) with PFS)

1. Admin updates

  • Skipped point due to busy agenda

2. Member/subteam/guest driven topic

SIG leadership model (Anders/Katrin/Arthur)

Context

  • Anders stepping down as co-chair
  • Revisit SIG leadership model to:
    • spread out the administrative workload
    • while bringing in fresh perspectives
    • and diverse expertise from across our membership.

Proposal

  • SIG leadership consists of 3 people, for robustness and sharing of admin workload
    • Formal/internal roles: chair, chair-elect, incoming chair
    • Frame outwards simply as ‘co-chair’, with co-chairs deciding among themselves how to distribute responsibilities
  • Each leader serves a 3-year term in total
    • Annual rotation: Chair steps down, Chair-Elect becomes Chair, Incoming Chair becomes Chair-Elect, we recruit a new Incoming Chair
    • Rotation example:
    • Year 1: A (Chair), B (Chair-Elect), C (Incoming)
    • Year 2: B (Chair), C (Chair-Elect), D (Incoming)
  • Benefits:
    • Continuity: Always have an experienced Chair
    • Fresh perspectives: New leader joins annually
    • Mentorship: Chair guides Chair-Elect, who then guides Incoming Chair

Transition to new model

  • Katrin and Arthur will replace Anders as co-chair, effective today 06-May
    • BIG thanks to Katrin and Arthur for taking this on!
  • Linking with long-term model
    • Lara will have the role as ‘Chair’
    • Katrin and Arthur will step in to fill ‘Chair-elect’ + ‘Incoming’ roles
  • First election end 2025:
    • Lara to step down, one of Arthur or Katrin taking on a chair role (-> serving until end 2026), the other the chair-elect role (-> serving until end 2027)
  • Details around new model etc will be developed by the new SIG leadership trio

IQWiG methods paper version 8.0 (Christine)

  • Christine walked through the updates in the new IQWiG methods paper
    • Click here to download Christine’s presentation

3. EU HTA – info sharing and updates (20min)

  • Lara introduced the next topic, framing the opportunity to HTA ESIG and EFSPI drive a broader discussion around how to ensure that we address PICOs with small-n P’s in a statistically and scientifically meaningful way
  • Dave Gelb shared MSD efforts on the topic Small PICOs: How should they be handled within the EU HTA context
    • Dave and Larry Leon from MSD have come up with a flowchart-type approach to deciding the extent of analysis appropriate for a given PICO
    • Branching in the flowchart accounts for quantitative/simulation assessment of when results are statistically meaningful
    • Discussion following Dave’s presentation:
      • Assessors will still need a place to “hang their hat” if we’re not providing statistics, what should that be?
      • To which extent are PICO addressability flowchart TA-dependent? Trial-size dependent? Etc
      • It’s a good target for cross-company collaboration (- even though it may be difficult to get broad buyin, it’s an important discussion starter, and as a community we can still drive awareness/help with environment shaping
      • It can also be useful input to redaction discussions (redact in situations where not statistically meaningful/where data privacy considerations due to inadvertent subgroup disclosure)
  • A subteam was established to look more into this topic, with a cross-company view
    • Subteam: Dave, Milana, Min-Hua (Action all:: reach out to Dave or Milana if you’re interested in joining)
    • Anders also mentioned that this would be a nice topic to take to EU HTA Stakeholder Network meetings

4. Events and conferences

PSI 2025

  • PSI 2025, London, 8-11 June
    • Who will be there?
      • Michael S, Ursula, Grammati, Katrin, Lena S, Jens, Anders, Lara, Claire put their name in the chat
        • Action all: others coming to PSI/anyone that we missed? Let Anders know.
    • Action Orlando: setup a Whatsapp group for HTA ESIG/PSI 2025
  • Presentations (Anders will put an overview on the SIG site)
    • HTA SIG engagement Tuesday lunch
    • Parallel session: Evidence synthesis. Squaring the circle: bridging innovation with application (Anders + Min-Hua + others)
    • SIG session: SEE-ing the Future: Empowering Health Decisions through Structured Expert Elicitation (collab HTA SIG/historical data SIG - Min-Hua + others)
    • HTA townhall: No easy answers: communicating about statistics and uncertainty in Health Technology Assessment (Maricarmen Climent + Nick Lattimer)
    • Posters?
      • Action all: Let Anders know if you have posters
    • Other HTA-relevant sessions?
      • Action all: Let Anders know if there are other HTA-relevant sessions that we should flæag

5. AOB

  • EFSPI Statistics Leaders Meeting coming up (12th May) https://www.efspi.org/, we will report back on this at next SIG meeting
  • (Topic will be pushed to June meeting: HTA ESIG track to drive work on strengthening the evidence of correlation of non-OS endpoints (PROs) with PFS)