Please find all presentations on-line when you click into the different streams.

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I would like to thank all who wrote posts and comments and all our readers. We “close” now the blog. That means we don’t add posts. But of course the blog will stay on-line.

I will only add one final post once we have uploaded all presentations on the conference website. If you were a participant you will be alerted via mail. If you were no participant you may subscribe to the blog via rss feed (see bottom of the blog) or via e-mail (see left column) and my last posting here will tell you that the presentations are on-line.

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Reflections on health and microsimulation.

Dr Deborah Schofield (Associate Professor and Director of Research, Northern Rivers University Department of Rural Health (NRUDRH), School of Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, University of Sydney, Australia):

When I began working on tax-benefit models at NATSEM about 15 years ago I was struck by both the potential of microsimulation for modelling health systems but also by how few applications in this area there were. At the 1993 conference in Canberra that many of us remember, health was not a main feature. It was challenging and fun to pioneer health applications in Australia and to see their use develop over the last 10 years and then to come of age with their recent use in high profile government policy documents such as Treasury’s Intergenerational Report and private health insurance subsidy policy.

How different it is at the first IMA conference here is Vienna than it was in 1993 in Canberra! Now there are several sessions on this theme with applications ranging from the distribution of health care, to health workforce planning to projections of health and its impacts on labour force participation with papers from all corners of the globe. It is great to now be part of a thriving international community of microsimulation modellers working in the area of health care.

Cheers
Deborah

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Stijn Lefebure (Herman Deleeck Centre for Social Policy, Belgium):

Since most of you are members, I can safely state that the first conference of our International Microsimulation Association was a big hit. My institute – the Herman Deleeck Centre for Social Policy- has developed and cooperated on simulation models of various natures. The other participants gave us lots of ideas to further improve our existing model.

This conference came at an ideal time. Next fall, we start building a dynamic microsimulation model to project the Belgian income distribution towards 2050. The discussion between the LIFEPATHS and DYNACAN teams regarding, for instance, optimal marriage market simulation/spouse generation will prove very helpful in avoiding pitfalls. Also, I found the testimony of the SESIM team regarding alignment problems very enlightening.

This conference had a very intensive program. Starting early and ending late! Thanks to the highly interesting presentations, focus kept on. And I admit: the prospect of the delightful pastries at every the break lifted the spirit as well.

See you next time!

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Georg Mueller (Dept. of Social Science, Univ. of Fribourg / Switzerland):

First I would like to thank the organizers of the IMA-2007 conference for their excellent work. It was a good opportunity to get an overview of many different microsimulation models, their present results, and future possible applications.

As IMA is a professional association of modellers, the conference was mainly a platform of exchange for architects of simulation-models. Hence I missed the presence the end-users of such models: the expectations and ideas of policy makers and politicians could have made an important additional contribution to the future of microsimulation. Perhaps one should explicitly invite some of these people to the next IMA-conference.

Similarly I also missed the virtual presence of the common citizen, who is often the financial source of many of our models. By providing web-based simplified access to models, citizens should have a democratic opportunity to actively participate in planning processes by becoming real actors instead of being passive objects of studies. As to me, this kind of democratic access to models is one of the ethical dimensions, which the deputy mayor of Vienna mentioned in her speech at our banquet in the wonderful historic town-hall.

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