The department's key responsibility is to identify and describe health care standards. The main basis for this is clinical practice guidelines (CPGs). Clinical pictures and courses of diseases can generally be mapped throughout the complete health care chain using CPGs.
The staff produce the department's products with the collaboration of external experts. Their tasks comprise the following:
- analysing guidelines and producing CPG synopses,
- comparing current CPGs with the requirements of existing Disease Management Programmes (DMPs) in order to identify whether a DMP needs to be updated,
- comparing standards with the health care quality measured using secondary data in order to provide a basis for the development of quality indicators and health care policies.
In addition,
- they develop scientific methods for the evaluation of the content of CPGs together with national and international expert groups,
- they collaborate actively in 2 EU projects:
Coordination of Cancer Clinical Practice Guidelines in Europe (CoCanCPG) und European Network for HTA (EUnetHTA).
Another of the department's responsibilities is to build and maintain contacts with international professional associations and networks in the field of health technology assessment and CPGs. More information can be found under IQWiG's
scientific exchange with other organizations.
