ISPOR is the largest global professional society for health economics and outcomes research (HEOR) and the leading source for scientific conferences, peer-reviewed and indexed publications, good practices guidance, education, collaboration, and tools/resources in the field. ISPOR's vision is for a world where healthcare is accessible, efficient, effective, and affordable for all. Its mission is to advance health economics and outcomes research excellence to improve decision making for health globally. ISPOR founded the
ISPOR Institute for Healthcare Transformation in 2025 with the mission to drive the relevance, use, and impact of HEOR in health and heath care decision making globally. The ISPOR Institute is a division of ISPOR designed to bridge the gap between research and its real-world application toward the Society's mission of improving healthcare decisions. ISPOR makes most of its tools and resources freely available as part of its mission. Toward its goal of improving the awareness, understanding, and use of HEOR in health care decision making, ISPOR developed its
HEOR Explained website. The Society publishes its
ISPOR Top 10 HEOR Trends Report every 2 years, which monitors and reports on the trends that affect health care decision making around the globe. ISPOR created a
US Healthcare System Overview website that summarizes one of the most complex and unique health care systems in the world. It provides its
HEOR Competencies Framework as a resource for HEOR professionals seeking to develop their careers and for those looking to hire accomplished professionals in the field. Additionally, ISPOR's
HEOR News Desk curates HEOR-relevant news stories from a variety of news sites. ISPOR is known for its work to develop Good Practices Reports for health economics and outcomes research. Its Consolidated Health Economic Evaluation Reporting Standards (CHEERS) Good Practices Report is used by researchers across the globe as a reporting guideline for health research studies. The Society collaborated with the
Society for Medical Decision Making to develop a comprehensive list of papers that outline the ideal practice for develop decision analytic models for pharmacoeconomic analysis. The society has also collaborated with the
Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy to develop guidelines for training programs and fellowships for future professionals in pharmacoeconomics and outcomes research. ISPOR's work crosses a wide range of strategic topics, including artificial intelligence (AI), real-world evidence, health technology assessment (HTA), whole health, value assessment, health policy, digital health, patient engagement and patient-centricity, market access and payer engagement, HEOR in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), and more. The Society also provides an HEOR by Topic site that curates HEOR content by a variety of health care subjects. An increasing number of new pharmaceuticals have used questionnaires to capture
Patient-reported outcome (PROs) of health care as a metric to complement their clinical effectiveness. These PROs require stringent
reliability testing and
validation, necessitating standardization for their development and use. The International Society for Quality of Life Research (ISOQOL) developed a minimum set of measurement standards to properly use PRO instruments. Moreover, ISPOR developed a set of standards to properly test these instruments for reliability and validity, which has been adopted by the
Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Currently, the FDA refers to the ISPOR Task Force's publications on
content validity for the development of new clinical outcome assessment instruments or tools. In terms of
breast cancer research, a recent paper from ISPOR highlights the importance of patient reported outcome measures (PROMs) to determine outcomes from the patients' perspective. In 2019, ISPOR released a series of papers that document how decision makers assess healthcare value. The National Pharmaceutical Council,
Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, and the
National Health Council have developed value-assessment frameworks to help guide decision makers and stakeholders to value healthcare. ISPOR's value-assessment framework focuses on patient centricity and the use of
cost-effectiveness analysis where the costs of the intervention are compared to standard of care in terms of costs and
quality-adjusted life years (QALYs). However criticisms of the use of a QALY-centric approach due to the limitations associated with these metrics have been voiced. Most recently, the society commented on the
American Society of Clinical Oncology value framework for new oncology treatment because it did not embrace the use of QALYs. Regardless, QALYs continue to remain an important metric in healthcare decision making and price negotiations. In 2018, ISPOR created a Patient Council that includes patient representatives to advise the advisory board in healthcare research and decision making. Since the passage of the
21st Century Cures Act in 2016, the FDA has established the
Real World Evidence program to help facilitate the approval process for drugs already approved under 505(c) of the
Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. The FDA will use recommendations from the ISPOR—The Professional Society for Health Economics and Outcomes Research and the
International Society for Pharmacoepidemiology (ISPE) to develop a set of standards that would use good procedural practices for treatment effectiveness studies, including transparency and reproducibility. ISPOR hosts scientific conferences, summits and other events events in the North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Latin America, and virtually. On September 29, 2020, the organization held a joint summit with the
Food and Drug Administration on the topic of patient preference information in
medical device regulatory decisions. The event was supported by grants from CVRx Inc.,
Edwards Lifesciences and Evidation Health. == Publications ==