Submitting a comment

Each interested person or institution can participate in IQWiG's work by submitting comments, thus providing early information on important arguments, studies or guidelines.

For the following document types, a public commenting procedure (=hearing) is opened on iqwig.de upon publication:

  • report plans (e.g. for benefit assessments of drugs)
  • preliminary reports (e.g. for benefit assessments or guideline synopses)
  • preliminary ThemenCheck reports (ThemenCheck Medizin)
  • drafts of the General Methods (Methods Paper)

find out more about the different types of IQWiG reports

Further commenting options:

  • There are also commenting procedures for the early benefit assessment of drugs according to AMNOG (dossier assessment), for assessments of the potential of non-drug interventions, and for assessments according to § 137h SGB V, but these are not carried out by IQWiG, but by the Federal Joint Committee (G-BA). Information on these commenting procedures can be found on the G-BA website.

We provide information on IQWiG's current commenting procedures on this website and on our homepage.

Your comment must meet certain formal requirements so that we can consider it:

  • Form of comments: Comments must be submitted to IQWiG in writing, in German, by the deadline and using the form "Template for a comment", which can be found on the respective project page. The examples below show what these forms look like.
  • Deadlines: The deadline for submitting comments begins with the publication of the document undergoing a hearing. The deadline for the submission of comments can be found on the homepage of www.iqwig.de and on the respective project page. The date and time of receipt of the comments by IQWiG are decisive for meeting the deadline.
  • Submission of comments: Please submit comments to IQWiG preferably by e-mail and ideally as a PDF, stating the project number and document type in the subject line. In exceptional cases, comments may also be submitted by post.

Publication by IQWiG

The complete content of the comments, including the names of the persons submitting comments and, if applicable, the institution is published on the IQWiG website in the "Documentation of the hearing". The section marked on the cover sheet of the template for comments ("Contact details") and letters attached to the comments (e.g. e-mail or letter) are not published. Further details on publication can be found in the "Template for a comment" and in the document "Information on data protection".

Comments that do not meet the formal requirements will not be published and will not be included in the scientific debate.

contact details

to report: berichte@iqwig.de (subject: e.g. comment on preliminary report S19-01)

on the draft of the General Methods: methoden@iqwig.de (subject: e.g. comments on the methods paper)

per post:
Institut für Qualität und Wirtschaftlichkeit im Gesundheitswesen
subject: Comments on [enter document type and project number (e.g. preliminary report N19-02 / General methods draft for version ...)].
Dr. med. Thomas Kaiser
Im Mediapark 8
50670 Köln Germany

After receipt of the comment, you will receive confirmation of receipt from IQWiG.

If aspects of the written comments remain unclear, the Institute may additionally invite persons submitting comments to a scientific debate.

Such a debate

  • is limited to persons submitting comments whose personal appearance is necessary to clarify questions, staff of the Institute, external experts and external reviewers. The Institute may limit the number of representatives per comment. This is communicated accordingly in the invitation to the debate.
  • takes place in the form of a discussion round
  • is not public.
  • is conducted in German. Simultaneous translation into other languages is not possible.

If a debate is planned, the date is published on the project page as soon as possible. If the debate takes place, the invitations will be sent to the above-mentioned group of participants.

If no debate takes place (because the Institute does not consider it necessary), all those submitting comments will receive a written cancellation. In the case of the methods paper, information on the date of a planned debate is provided after the comments have been reviewed. After the deadline for submitting comments has expired, the required participants will be explicitly invited in writing, usually 10 working days before the date set by the Institute. If the debate takes place for a health economic evaluation according to §35b SGB V, the participants are invited at least 5 working days before the date of the debate.

Travel expenses are generally not reimbursed.

In exceptional cases, it is possible to be represented by a person previously named to the Institute.

The debate is recorded as a verbatim recording by a minute-taker from the parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia on behalf of IQWiG. The written minutes are published in a separate document "Documentation of the hearing" or "Documentation and evaluation of the hearing" on the project or methods paper webpage. If we deem it necessary, previously unpublished documents will also be published in full text if they were attached to a comment as evidence or if they were mentioned in the course of the debate and subsequently provided after a request by IQWiG.

Current commenting procedures & calls for tenders

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