Decision Science News

27TH SOCIETY FOR MEDICAL DECISION MAKING ANNUAL MEETING

We are pleased to invite you to submit an abstract and attend the 27th Annual Meeting of the Society for Medical Decision Making (SMDM).

This year’s meeting will take place from October 21-24, 2005 in San Francisco, CA. The meeting hotel is the Hyatt Regency San Francisco.

The theme of the 2005 meeting will be Translating Medical Decision Making Research into Practice. We plan to highlight the ways in which decision science – ranging from decision analysis, clinical decision aids, cost-effectiveness analysis, and clinical modeling – is translated into clinical care and health system operations. We encourage submission of abstracts in all relevant areas, with a particular emphasis on this year’s theme of translating knowledge into practice. As we will have an overlapping session with the International Society for Quality of Life Research (ISOQOL) , we are also interested in abstracts of interest to members of both societies. Reviewers representing a range of disciplines, who are blind to authorship, will select abstracts for all oral and poster presentations.

This year’s meeting is different in several exciting ways – first, ISOQOL will be having their annual meeting immediately preceding the SMDM meeting also at the Hyatt. We hope many of our members decide to come a day or two early and participate in the ISOQOL meeting – and are looking forward to having some ISOQOL members stay a little longer to see what SMDM is all about! In addition, on Saturday October 22nd our opening session will be a joint session with the ISOQOL attendees. We plan to highlight abstracts from both societies which explore the scientific overlap of SMDM and ISOQOL and will end the session with a joint poster session and reception.

Second, because this year our meeting is on the west coast, and given our overlap with the ISOQOL meeting, we will be starting the short courses on Friday afternoon (allowing our east coast members time to fly in that morning) and ending with a full day on Monday the 24th. Our short courses will therefore be on the afternoon of Friday October 21st and Saturday morning the 22nd. As usual, the short courses will address the methodologies and applications that span the broad spectrum of interests reflected in the Society. New courses offered this year include: Changing Physician Behavior, and Presenting Cost Effectiveness Results for Non Economists, as well as a special course by ISOQOL member John E. Ware PhD on Dynamic Health Assessments.

This year’s meeting will feature two special symposia: one focusing on priorities in patient decision making research, and the other looking at how to effectively communicate our research to our consumers. The Sunday symposium is entitled Translating Research into Practice: Setting a Research Agenda for Clinical Decision Tools in Cancer Prevention, Early Detection, and Treatment and will feature Ellen Peters PhD of the University of Oregon, E Dale Collins MD, MSc and Hilary Llewellyn-Thomas, PhD from Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, and Laura Siminoff PhD of Case Western Reserve University. The Monday symposium is entitled The Risky Business of Communicating Risk and will focus on effective ways of communicating methodologically and socially difficult material to the public, patients, physicians, and policy makers. This symposium will feature Howard Spielman, MBA, PhD of Management Semiotics International Inc, Steve Denning, LL.B, B.C.L. previously of the World Bank, and Baruch Fischhoff, PhD of Carnegie Mellon University.

For our social event we will be spending Sunday evening at the Bubble Lounge – a lovely establishment whose high ceilings, dark wood, and many areas of comfy couches and low tables will be the ideal back drop for great food and lively conversation. In addition, the program committee has put together a website full of information about San Francisco and things for you to do while you’re visiting. We hope that it will help you plan your trip to this lovely city.

Again, this year’s SMDM abstract submission process will be fully electronic. Complete instructions and the online form can be accessed on the SMDM website here. The deadline for receipt of abstracts is 11:59 midnight PST on June 10, 2005. Full text of accepted abstracts will appear in the November-December issue of our bi-monthly journal Medical Decision Making. In a subsequent mailing, you will receive an Annual Meeting overview, short course description, hotel and travel information about San Francisco and our social event, and a meeting registration form. The 27th SMDM Annual Meeting will provide a great opportunity to hear about cutting-edge research across a spectrum of disciplines with good friends in a friendly and supportive atmosphere.

We look forward to your submissions, and we’ll see you in San Francisco!

Sincerely,

Gillian D Sanders, PhD and Dena M. Bravata, MD, MS
2005 Program Co-Chairs