We have built this workshop following the format trialed and tested for nearly 50 years in the UK Health Economists' Study Group, 40 year in the Nordic Health Economists’ Study group and more recently the lowlands Health Economists’ Study Group and others.

In this sense, the format is not novel, but as far as we know, it has not been applied to a health economics meeting in Germany. Therefore, here is how it works and why it is a good format:

All papers are made available to all participants before the meeting to give all participants the chance to read them before the meeting. Therefore it is not possible to send updated versions of papers after the deadline.

1. The expectation is that all participants have at least skimmed all papers.

2. A discussant then presents AND discusses the paper for 30 minutes

   • It is up to the discussant whether presentation and discussion happen sequentially or simultaneously

   • Discussants and authors should not share and discuss updated papers, only the version made available to all participants should be discussed

   • Discussants and authors are encouraged, depending on time constraints, to have a constructive exchange about the work prior to the workshop

3. The authors of the paper then have a maximum of 5 minutes to clarify important issues if they believe the discussant unintentionally misrepresented their work.

   • Ideally, this time is not used to increase time for involvement of the audience

4. The audience then has 10 minutes to give their critical and constructive feedback on the presented work

5. The role of the session chair is threefold:

   1. to enforce the time limits

   2. to keep the ball rolling if the discussion gets stuck, it helps if chairs prepare some questions for this case

   3. to ensure the audience asks constructive questions related to the presented work or at least the same research field – monologues or tangents are not appreciated