The legislation contained in the Health Care Reform GKV-WSG (statutory health insurance - Act to promote competition) of April 2007 has extended IQWiG's responsibilities. Prior to that, the assessment of drugs was restricted to medical benefit. Now the Institute can also be commissioned to weigh up the costs of drug therapies against the benefit previously obtained.
With the support of a group of international health economists (PDF, 24 kB) and IQWiG's Scientific Advisory Board, the Institute then developed scientific methods concerning how the relations between cost and benefit are to be assessed.
Current version:
completion 12.10.2009
published 19.10.2009
Working Paper on Modelling in health economic evaluations (PDF, 394 kB)
Working Paper on Cost Estimation in health economic evaluations (PDF, 443 kB)
Generally comprehensible summary of the methodology (German version)
Costs and benefits in medicine - Efficiency Frontier Analysis (PDF, 200 kB)
Earlier versions of the draft can be found here.
