Members of the Health Economics Unit participated in Mt Hood Diabetes Challenge 2018
The 9th edition of the biennial Mt Hood Diabetes Challenge was held recently at the German Diabetes Center (Deutsches Diabetes-Zentrum) in Düsseldorf. The Mt Hood Challenge is a meeting of diabetes modelling groups who aim to present recent findings, discuss simulation techniques and compare results. Now in the 9th edition, and 18th year, the Mt Hood Challenge continues to grow with two new groups joining a large number of modelling teams that have participated in prior challenges.
The ‘challenge’ from which the meeting gets its name is a collaborative exercise where all participating teams attempt to simulate a common scenario. This year’s challenges were centred on the ability of models to replicate the results of two recently reported trials of novel pharmaceutical agents. This produced interesting results with a broad agreement among the majority of teams.
The Health Economics Unit from the Centre for Health Policy had strong presence both on the organising committee and in the line-up of presenters. Michele Tew, a PhD student in the unit, was central to the facilitation of the meeting, and Prof Philip Clarke and Prof Andrew Palmer were a driving force behind the event. Presentations on a range of topics were delivered by current members of the unit; Dr An Duy Tran and Josh Knight both spoke about aspects of modelling lifetime outcomes in patients with type 1 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Michelle Tew presented on her current work on quality of life following total knee replacement. Dr Xingyang Hua, a recently University of Melbourne PhD candidate now working at University of Oxford, delivered a presentation on a new diabetes model focused on an Asian population.
The next Mt Hood Diabetes Challenge, the 20-year anniversary of the first event, is scheduled to be held in Chicago in 2020. Prior to this meeting in Chicago, it is planned to have a Mt Hood regional meeting in Vietnam in 2019 with a focus on Asian diabetic populations. This regional meeting has the dual goals of facilitating the development of modelling methods in the region and involving new diabetes modelling groups to the Mt Hood Challenge.