SMDM 48th Annual Meeting, Oslo
I spent the last week of June at the Society for Medical Decision Making (SMDM) 48th Annual Meeting, hosted by the University of Oslo. This year’s theme was Medical Decision Making in Uncertain Times, and my head is still full of it.
What I presented
I presented our poster, “Projecting the Maternal and Infant Health Impact of a Federal Nicotine Product Standard.” It is work from our tobacco modeling team on a microsimulation that follows smoking, e-cigarette use, and pregnancy together, so we can estimate what the FDA’s proposed nicotine product standard would mean for mothers and infants, a group usually left out of these policy models. The underlying model is described in our medRxiv preprint.
Why this meeting
SMDM is the leading international society for the science of clinical and health-policy decision making. It is the intellectual home for cost-effectiveness analysis, decision-analytic and simulation modeling, shared decision making, and risk communication, and it publishes the field’s flagship journal, Medical Decision Making.
The parts I value most are the debates. Being in a room where people argue carefully about causal modeling, value of information, and decision making under uncertainty, and where saying “I am not sure that is right” is welcome, is the kind of intellectual stimulation that is hard to find and easy to miss once you have had it.
Notes from Oslo
Oslo gave the science a good backdrop. A calm city by the water, easy to walk, easy to like, and a good place to think between sessions. This is the city that hands out the Nobel Peace Prize, and I got to stand inside the City Hall where that ceremony happens, under those huge murals, trying to picture the day. I also finally saw Munch’s The Scream in person. There is something fitting about standing in front of the most famous painting of anxiety and dread in the same week as a meeting about how uncertainty shapes our decisions. I gave it a knowing nod.
The timing could not have been better, either. Norway won and went through to the last 16 of the World Cup while we were in town, and the whole city lit up. Flags in windows, horns in the streets, strangers celebrating together down by the water. You do not have to follow football to enjoy a country that happy. It gave the week a soundtrack.
Grateful to my co-authors and to everyone I talked with, learned from, and discussed with along the way. Already looking forward to the next one.
Previously at SMDM
At the 46th Annual North American Meeting in Boston (October 27 to 30, 2024, themed The Future of Medical Decision Making in the Era of Generative Artificial Intelligence), I presented a poster with Reza Yaesoubi on the cost-effectiveness of metformin versus SGLT2 inhibitors as first-line therapy in type 2 diabetes, a Markov decision-analytic comparison of the two treatment strategies.
Society for Medical Decision Making, 48th Annual Meeting, Oslo, Norway, June 28 to July 1, 2026. Meeting homepage.