Conferences and Membership Meetings
Save-the-Date 22 September 2026 –The INSIA Membership Meeting in Copenhagen
The INSIA Membership Meeting 2025
The third face-to-face membership meeting for INSIA members was held in Paris, hosted by the Haute Authorité de Santé (HAS). This year, 26 participants from the member organisations met to learn more about our different national contexts and about each other. We included methodological topics on the use of AI in evidence synthesis, such as language models in Risk of Bias assessment and AI in the systematic review process, social investment, economic calculation models and return on social investment. We also learned about incorporating equality & diversity in reviews and guidance and economic analysis on gambling-related harms.
Separate time was also allocated for the working groups to meet in person (with some participants joining online) in order to plan the future work and prioritize what activities and tasks to focus on in 2026.
The INSIA Membership Meeting 2024
The second face-to-face membership meeting for INSIA members was held in conjunction with the Global Evidence Summit in September in Prague. 18 participants from the member organisations met to learn more about each other and our different national contexts. We focused on methodological topics of interest, such as evaluation of critical appraisal tools for Qualitative Evidence Synthesis, artificial intelligence and machine learning tools in the SIA reviewing process and evaluation of OpenAlex. The meeting also provided an opportunity to discuss the future development, and activities, of the network.
The working groups also had time allocated for themselves to meet in person (some participants joined online) in order to prioritize what tasks and activities to focus on when planning their future work.
The SIA Conference 2023–How to assess social interventions with high quality, transparency and transferability? Towards a common methodology
The first face-to-face membership meeting for INSIA members was held in conjunction with the SIA Conference in May 23-24, 2023 in Stockholm. 26 participants from the member organisations met to discuss the future development, and activities, of the network as well as methodological topics of interest. We spent time focusing on observational studies in systematic reviews, the breadth of evidence used in SIA, artificial intelligence and machine learning in SIA & how to speed up information retrieval.
One of the opening speakers at the conference was Minna Ljunggren, State Secretary to Camilla Waltersson Grönvall (the Minister for Social Services), “When people turn to social services for help, they should be able to expect evidence-based and effective support. Therefore, we need to provide the conditions for actors to exchange evidence in order to get a social service with the highest quality possible.”
She also noted that methods for evaluating interventions have long been in place in health care, while the social field has fallen behind.
“This is a problem because social care has just as much impact on people’s lives as health care.”, Minna Ljunggren concluded with the hope that the ongoing conference and INSIA will contribute to the development of methods for evaluating social services’ efforts with high quality, transparency and transferability.
