Kick-off into the second project half: PECUNIA Satellite Workshop and 2nd Progress Meeting in Basel

During July 17 and 18, 2019, the PECUNIA partners came together for their Satellite Workshop and 2nd Progress Meeting:

PECUNIA Satellite Workshop

In the afternoon of July 17, 2019, the consortium invited to its 1st Satellite Workshop. The workshop was a major milestone in the work plan in order to present, discuss and evaluate the project’s interim results together with relevant stakeholders. The overall goal was to integrate one of the main objectives of PECUNIA – to increase stakeholder awareness and engagement to ensure rapid adoption of the developed methods, tools and information for their long-term sustainability and further expansion.

The interactive workshop, which was linked to the iHEA conference in Basel, Switzerland, focused on validating the methodological approach developed in the first half of the project. In particular, the consortium invited health economists with interest and expertise in economic evaluations and costing studies. Due to the summer break, it was not easy to recruit a good number of experts but in the end, almost 20 people attended and involved in vivid discussions with the PECUNIA team members.

The 3-hours workshop was divided into two parts: In the beginning of Part I, Coordinator Prof. Judit Simon briefly introduced the project, also focusing on the PECUNIA care atom and the DESDE-LTC coding system. Then, the Work Package (WP) leads of the WPs 1-4, Alexander Konnopka, Silvia Evers, Leona Hakkaart-van Roijen and Valentin Brodszky, presented their work and first results.
For Part II, the team of the University of Maastricht (UM) initiated an interactive discussion on the standardised, multi-sectoral resource use measurement (RUM) on behalf of Horizontal Activity 3 - Measurement. In the beginning, the participants were asked to identify RUM issues that they have encountered. Luca Janssen and Irina Pokhilenko (UM) incorporated the answers in their presentation on RUM issues identified in their literature review and the resulting RUM Issues Framework. Then, the researchers introduced the proposed PECUNIA RUM modules for the different WPs. This was followed by a break-out session, during which the participants were split into five groups, each with a different sector in focus (1 - health and social care, 2 - education, 3 - criminal justice, 4 - employability, 5 - patient and family). They were asked to identify five relevant items of resource use, before choosing the most important and developing a question for it. The groups were also asked to specify a valuation method for the item chosen. In the end, the groups presented their results and gave feedback on the task. While participants enjoyed the activity very much, they were also confronted with the practical challenges of RUM development, e.g. the difficulty of developing an item into a question or with phraseology issues.

Next steps: Horizontal Activity 3 leads, University of Maastricht and University of Bristol, will incorporate the input raised during the workshop into the RUM instrument module drafts developed by the sectoral task leads (WP1: MUW, WP2: UM, WP3: EUR, WP4: CUB) and will present the multi-sectoral draft PECUNIA RUM to an expert focus group at the ISPOR Conference 2019 in Copenhagen.

The PECUNIA consortium thanks all participants for attending the workshop which was crucial for further validating the methods and tools developed within the project! A BIG THANK YOU also to the organisers of the iHEA conference who supported the Management Team immensely with the organisation of the event.

PECUNIA_Workshop_2019-07-17_programme_PRINT.pdf

2nd Progress Meeting

Right after the Satellite Workshop, the PECUNIA partners continued with their 2019 Progress Meeting. The first half day was used to assess the outputs of the Satellite Workshop and briefly consult on the 2nd Workshop which will take place towards the end of the project. In addition, issues related to Management as well as Dissemination and Communication (WP7 and WP8) were addressed by the Management Team (MUW, Eurice). In the evening, the partners toasted to a long but successful meeting day in a lovely Basel restaurant next to the Rhine. The second meeting day started with a workshop on exploitation organised by partner Eurice together with the coordinator. In the course of the session, they addressed different exploitation pathways and relevant legal issues in order to kick-off the development of an exploitation plan to deal with the PECUNIA results in the best possible way. The afternoon was dedicated to an intense discussion on the current developments in Horizontal Activities 2 (Definition), 3 (Measurement) and 4 (Valuation).

Overall, half time through the project, the execution of the PECUNIA work plan is on track and the interaction between the consortium members is very harmonious despite the immense complexity of the project. With these key factors running smoothly, the partners are looking forward to the next 18 months and potential future collaboration options beyond!

  • Group work during PECUNIA Satellite Workshop

  • PECUNIA Consortium during its 2nd Progress Meeting in Basel