Comparing the effectiveness of existing healthcare interventions in the adult population

Proposals should compare the use of currently available preventative or therapeutic (pharmacological as well as non-pharmacological) healthcare interventions in adults[[Screening and / or the involvement of elderly populations are not excluded.]]. While there is no restriction on the diseases or interventions to be the focus of proposals, preference will be given to proposals focusing on interventions with high public health relevance and socio-economic impact, i.e. interventions addressing conditions that are particularly frequent, may lead to co-morbidities, have a high negative impact on the quality of life of the individual and/or are associated with significant costs or where savings can be achieved. A cost effectiveness analysis must be included. Given the focus on existing interventions, proposals will aim to contribute to improve interventions, take decisions about the discontinuation of interventions that are less effective or less cost-effective than others, and make recommendations on the most effective and cost-effective approaches. A comprehensive array of clinical and safety parameters, as well as health and socio-economic outcomes (e.g. quality of life, patient mortality, morbidity, costs, and performance of the health systems) for chosen populations should be assessed. Agreed core outcome sets (COS) should be used as endpoints in conditions where they already exist, in other cases efforts should be made to agree on such COS. Randomised controlled trials, pragmatic trials, observational studies, large scale databases and meta-analyses may be considered for this topic. Where relevant the study population should address gender as well as socio-economic differentials in health and/or any other factors that affect health equity.

The Commission considers that proposals requesting a contribution from the EU of between EUR 4 and 6 million would allow this specific challenge to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other amounts.

Effective health care and prevention may be improved by additional evidence as to the most effective health interventions. Growing numbers of patients affected by chronic diseases also call for efficiently managing co-morbidities.

This topic is to provide the required evidence base for:

• more effective and safer interventions at individual and population level;
• enhanced compliance with healthcare interventions in the adult population;
• the use of health technology assessment methodology in this target group.

In particular:

• Improvement of individual patient outcomes and health outcome predictability through tailoring of interventions.
• Improvement of guideline development for prevention or treatment of diseases and the management of comorbidities.
• Provision of more accurate information to patients, caregivers and prescribers.