Society for Medical Decision Making

The Society for Medical Decision Making (SMDM), will hold its 47th Annual Meeting from 15-18 June 2025 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States, at University of Michigan. This shift in meeting timing from October to June is part of SMDM's decision to move the Annual Meeting to academic campus locations. We know this is a quick turnaround from the Boston meeting, but we have exciting plans, including some new offerings, in the works for Ann Arbor.

The SMDM Annual Meeting will bring together high-quality oral and poster presentations, short courses, symposia presentations, and workshops from all disciplines involved in the study of decision making in health and medicine, including evidence-based medicine and public health, patient & stakeholder preferences and engagement, psychology, cognition science, shared decision making, decision modeling, outcomes research, epidemiology, health economics, health care management, policy research, health technology assessment, health informatics, health ethics and law, and others.

NEW FOR 2025: Clinician Crosstalk Sessions!: In addition to soliciting abstracts, short course proposals, and symposia proposals, we are also soliciting applications to participate in dedicated clinician crosstalk sessions that will be developed by collaborative working groups over the next 8 months. For more details, please see the Call for Clinician Crosstalk Working Group Participants below. Please download and share our Clinician Crosstalk Invitation Flyer with anyone who may be interested.

All decisions regarding scientific content and speaker selection are made by the SMDM Michigan Meeting Planning Committee.

Note:

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Submissions will be accepted through Wednesday, 15 January 2025

Access Submission Portal Here For Abstracts, Symposia, Short Courses, and Speakers

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Call for Abstracts

Submitted abstracts will be considered for either an oral presentation or a poster poster presentation.

Abstracts are submitted in the following topic areas:

1. Decision Psychology and Shared Decision Making;

2. Applied Health Economics;

3. Health Services, Outcomes, and Policy Research;

4. Quantitative Methods and Theoretical Developments; and

5. Patient and Stakeholder Preferences and Engagement.

Oral Abstracts are organized around common themes and presented from a podium in 15-minute blocks, including audience Q&A. The Annual Meeting typically features 80 – 90 oral presentations in no more than three concurrent sessions of 6 abstracts per session.

Poster Abstracts are presented in sessions of 50 – 60 posters each. The poster format allows the author to delve into and discuss the specifics of an abstract in one-on-one and small group conversations with other meeting attendees. The Annual Meeting typically offers 200 – 240 poster abstracts.

The Lee B. Lusted Student Prizes are awarded for outstanding student posters at the Annual Meeting. The competition is named after Dr. Lee B. Lusted, a leader in advancing medical decision making as a field, founding member of the Society in 1979, and the first editor of the Journal of Medical Decision Making. Two awards are given in each of the five SMDM Scientific Areas of Interest. To be eligible for the Lusted Student Prize Competition, the first author on the abstract must be enrolled in a degree granting program, a resident/fellow in a clinical training program, or postdoctoral research fellow at the time of abstract submission.

Be sure to reference the abstract guidelines before submitting.

2025 Abstract Submission Guidelines

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Call for Short Courses

Short Course Submissions should address at least one of the SMDM abstract topic areas above. Short Courses are half-day, workshop-style presentations that provide a beginner, intermediate, or expert level overview of an MDM specific topic. Courses can be applicable for more than one topic area, and we encourage courses that are relevant to the 2025 Annual Meeting theme, Principled Practice: Integrating Ethics into Medical Decision Making.

2025 Short Course Submission Guidelines

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Call for Symposia

Symposia submissions should directly address the 2025 Annual Meeting theme, Principled Practice: Integrating Ethics into Medical Decision Making.

We are looking for thought-provoking symposia with widespread appeal to SMDM members, including researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and patients.

Proposals will be evaluated on content, relationship to theme, and geographic, demographic, and stakeholder diversity in the speakers. Non-traditional formats are welcome, including fireside chats, ignite/lightning talks, debates, workshops, etc.

2025 Symposia Submission Guidelines

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Call for Clinician Crosstalk Working Group Participants

At the 2025 SMDM Annual Meeting, all sessions on the last half-day of the conference (i.e., the morning of Wednesday, 18 June 2025) will have a common overarching theme of clinician crosstalk / current issues in MDM. In addition:

All sessions will be focused on achieving two complementary goals:

1. Facilitating crosstalk between practicing clinicians and SMDM researchers. We want to create sessions that will attract clinicians so that they can see to see how MDM research may be relevant to their daily practice. We also want to create opportunities for MDM researchers to learn clinicians’ perspectives regarding their work. What do clinicians need? What concepts make sense in their practice, and where does current research seem disconnected from clinical realities? Etc.

2. Focus attention on current issues affecting the implementation of medical decision making work into clinical practice. E.g.: Do clinicians and researchers actually agree on what “shared decision making” means in practice? When do clinicians find decision models helpful or unhelpful, trustworthy or skepticism-inducing? What problems need to be addressed to make MDM research more relevant to clinicians’ daily lives? Etc.

In an effort to expand the range of expertise present in these sessions, we are holding this open call for participation within the SMDM community. Note that we are NOT requesting applications for full symposia. Instead, we are requesting applications to be matched with others with complementary topical interests to create topical working groups, which will be convened in February 2025. These groups will then collaborate with the Annual Meeting Co-Chairs to develop these sessions.

In addition, it is also our hope that each of the clinician crosstalk / current issues in MDM sessions will lead to a commentary / summary journal article, hopefully to be published in MDM Policy & Practice. Journal Editor-in-Chief Brian Zikmund-Fisher will be in contact with each team of presenters to discuss this possibility as part of the development of these sessions.

2025 Clinician Crosstalk Working Group Participants

2025 Clinician Crosstalk Invitational Flyer

Submissions will be accepted through Wednesday, 15 January 2025

Access Submission Portal Here For Abstracts, Symposia, Short Courses, and Speakers