IQWiG celebrates its 10th anniversary

The Foundation for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care was established in June 2004, the first members of staff started work in October, and a team of 16 people moved into the Institute’s own premises in the Cologne district of Kalk in November. So in fact, the Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) has several anniversaries to celebrate. On 24 June 2014, the Institute invited representatives of politics, the self-government of the health care system, and research to a Parliamentary Evening in Berlin. The annual Autumn Symposium taking place at the end of November will be dedicated to the anniversary and will also take a look into the future.

Words of praise from the State Secretary and the Chairman of the Foundation Council

Almost 100 guests accepted IQWiG’s invitation to the premises of the Representation of the State of Saxony-Anhalt. In his greeting, the State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of Health, Lutz Stroppe, outlined the stages of the Institute’s development, which IQWiG can “look back on with pride”. He said that the Institute’s reports provided an important basis for decisions in health care and that, particularly as competing interests were involved in these decisions, besides the scientific basis of the work, the integrity of the institution always had to be beyond any doubt.

The Chairman of the Foundation Council, Dr Wolfgang Eßer, who is also Chairman of the German Federal Association of Sick Fund Dentists, acknowledged that IQWiG had set standards with its reports, both on a national and an international level. He said that after the turbulent years of setting up the Institute, during which IQWiG had to endure much criticism, which was sometimes not objective, nowadays the focus was on the reliability and informative value of the reports.

Windeler: Independence is the basis of success

Jürgen Windeler, who has been the Institute’s Director for 4 years, thanked both the IQWiG staff and his predecessor Peter Sawicki: “The success of IQWiG is also his merit”, Windeler said. “However, I particularly thank the supporting organizations, that is, the representatives of the self-government of the health care system, who had the trust and the vision to ensure and respect the professional independence of the Institute with their decisions in the committees and organs of the Foundation – even though they may not always have found this easy.” Windeler was also convinced that “independence is the basis of the success of our Institute.”

Constructive cooperation with self-government and researchers

Windeler also had anniversary wishes: “I hope that the cooperation with the self-government of the health care system and with researchers, particularly the scientific societies, will continue to be as constructive as I have experienced it to be in the last 4 years.”

And addressing politicians, Windeler wished for an adequate regulation on the benefit assessment of non-drug interventions and medical devices. He said that he felt confirmed by the latest report of the German Council of Experts, and that the coalition agreement also pointed in the right direction. He argued that Germany needed an adequate structure to produce the evidence, the lack of which has repeatedly been noted in IQWiG’s reports. “What we need are incentives to conduct good-quality studies. This is also (but not only) a question of money”, Windeler said.

EBM has arrived in everyday health care, but is not yet at home

A widely-applauded speech was held by Professor Dr Christopher Baethge, editor of the medical-scientific editorial office of the “Deutsche Ärzteblatt”, the official journal of the German Medical Association and the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians. He stated that evidence-based medicine (EBM) had arrived in everyday health care – also thanks to IQWiG’s work – but was not yet at home.

He also said that various reasons existed for the uneasiness about EBM in Germany. For example, compared with basic research, there was still a low priority of research oriented towards patients and use in everyday health care. In addition, research findings relevant to EBM were preferably published in English-language scientific journals. On the occasion of its anniversary, IQWiG presented a nearly 70-page (German-language) booklet, documenting and reflecting on its work in the last decade. A print version can be ordered at IQWiG (info@iqwig.de) or downloaded from the website as a PDF file.