Are you fluent in AI?

Professor Rick Dakan (Ringling College of Art and Design) and Professor Joseph Feller (University College Cork) developed the 4D Framework for AI Fluency. What is it? Delegation: Deciding on what work should be done by humans, what work should be done by AI, and how to distribute tasks between them. Includes understanding your goals, AI capabilities,…

Are Veterans benefits about to become more generous?

Perhaps, if the Sharri Briley and Eric Edmundson Veterans Benefits Expansion Act becomes law. The bill just recently passed the House of Representatives. Newsweek summarizes the bill’s provisions as follows: The bill would increase Dependency and Indemnity Compensation benefits by 1.5 percent over two years. Those payments are provided by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to…

Links

Ebola outbreak in the Congo. AI Mathematicians. Why Long-Term Care Policy Keeps Failing. ISPOR: first, second and third plenary. The Indiana Bears?

Medicare Drug Price Negotiation is here to stay

At least, it won’t be overturned by the US Supreme Court. Endpoints reports: The Supreme Court says it won’t wade into the pharma industry’s yearslong legal battle over Medicare drug price negotiations. The justices declined to review multiple cases brought by AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, Bristol Myers Squibb, Novo Nordisk, Novartis and Boehringer Ingelheim… The…

Does AI spell the end for HEOR?

That is the title of my latest column in The Evidence Base. In this latest edition of Perspectives from the Healthcare Economist, Jason Shafrin (FTI Consulting and Mann School of Pharmacy, University of Southern California) examines how AI is beginning to reshape health economics and outcomes research (HEOR), from evidence generation and literature reviews to data analysis…

ISPOR 2026

Excited to be attending ISPOR 2026 next week. I’m looking forward to some great plenary sessions, presenting my research on “The Extent of Treatment Response and Preference Heterogeneity in Major Depressive Disorder: Implications for Population-Level Resource Allocation” with co-authors Nadine Zawadzki and Cheryl Neslusan, and meeting up with old colleagues. See you in Philadelphia!

How will Europe’s economies compare to the US by 2030?

That is the question Luis Garicano asks in his recent post. He relies on projections from the 2025 IMF World Economic Outlook. On the positive side, Eastern European countries’ economies are likely to converge with the US. While we have spent a decade complaining about Europe’s stagnation, a real positive convergence story has been unfolding…