The experiences of 33 national COVID-19 dashboard teams during the first year of the pandemic in the World Health Organization European Region: A qualitative study.

Background: Governments across the World Health Organization (WHO) European Region have prioritised dashboards for reporting COVID-19 data. The ubiquitous use of dashboards for public reporting is a novel phenomenon.

Objective: This study explores the development of COVID-19 dashboards during the first year of the pandemic and identifies common barriers, enablers and lessons from the experiences of teams responsible for their development.

Features Constituting Actionable COVID-19 Dashboards: Descriptive Assessment and Expert Appraisal of 158 Public Web-Based COVID-19 Dashboards.

Background: Since the outbreak of COVID-19, the development of dashboards as dynamic, visual tools for communicating COVID-19 data has surged worldwide. Dashboards can inform decision-making and support behavior change. To do so, they must be actionable.

An expert-based mapping of healthcare system strategies to support rational drug prescribing in primary care across 13 European countries.

Background: Irrational prescribing has received increasing attention among policy-makers to improve drug safety and effectiveness while avoiding economic waste. The policies intended to rationalise prescribing have been grouped by WHO under a taxonomy, classifying them into two types of strategies - (1) targeted approaches (micro level) and (2) system-oriented approaches (macro level). The extent to which countries implement strategies and the existing types is currently unknown.

Cost-of-illness studies in nine Central and Eastern European countries.

Background: To date, a multi-country review evaluating the cost-of-illness (COI) studies from the Central and Eastern European (CEE) region has not yet been published. Our main objective was to provide a general description about published COI studies from CEE.

Methods: A systematic search was performed between 1 January 2006 and 1 June 2017 in Medline, EMBASE, The Cochrane Library, CINAHL, and Web of Science to identify all relevant COI studies from nine CEE countries.

EQ-5D studies in nervous system diseases in eight Central and East European countries: a systematic literature review.

Backround: Guidelines for economic analyses of health care technologies require local input data for reimbursement decisions in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). The aim of this study was to systematically review and analyse the available empirical studies using the EQ-5D instrument as a measure of the health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in patients with neurological diseases.

Methods: A systematic literature search was performed up to 1st April 2018 to identify relevant studies in eight selected CEE countries.

Shared decision making between patient and GP about referrals from primary care: Does gatekeeping make a difference?

Primary care faces challenging times in many countries, mainly caused by an ageing population. The GPs' role to match patients' demand with medical need becomes increasingly complex with the growing multiple conditions population. Shared decision-making (SDM) is recognized as ideal to the treatment decision making process.

Rationalizing the introduction and use of pharmaceutical products: The role of managed entry agreements in Central and Eastern European countries.

This paper aims to provide an overview of the rationalization strategies for the introduction and use of pharmaceuticals, focusing on the role of managed entry agreements (MEA) in Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries, namely Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Hungary, Poland and Romania. We developed a conceptual framework on MEAs that was used as the basis for a standardized assessment questionnaire sent to country experts to capture their perceptions on their countries' rationalization strategies and MEAs. Our study shows that the main role of MEAs and other related policies embedded in the health care system is to limit the budget impact of drugs in all examined 6 countries.

EQ-5D studies in cardiovascular diseases in eight Central and Eastern European countries: a systematic review of the literature.

Background: The measurement of health-related quality of life (HRQoL) by validated generic instruments, such as EQ-5D, has become an increasingly important tool for the assessment of health care in a wide range of diagnoses.

Aim: We aimed to systematically review EQ-5D literature on cardiovascular diseases in eight Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries.

Methods: A structured literature search was conducted in MEDLINE, EMBASE, Web of Science, CINAHL, PsycINFO, Cochrane Library, and the EuroQol website up to November 2016.

EQ-5D studies in musculoskeletal and connective tissue diseases in eight Central and Eastern European countries: a systematic literature review and meta-analysis.

EQ-5D is becoming the preferred instrument to measure health-state utilities involved in health technology assessment. The objective of this study is to assess the state of EQ-5D research in musculoskeletal disorders in 8 Central and Eastern European countries and to provide a meta-analysis of EQ-5D index scores. Original research articles published in any language between Jan 2000 and Sept 2016 were included, if they reported any EQ-5D outcome from at least two musculoskeletal patients from Austria, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, or Slovenia.

EQ-5D in Central and Eastern Europe: 2000-2015.

Objective: Cost per quality-adjusted life year data are required for reimbursement decisions in many Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries. EQ-5D is by far the most commonly used instrument to generate utility values in CEE. This study aims to systematically review the literature on EQ-5D from eight CEE countries.

Reporting and use of the OECD Health Care Quality Indicators at national and regional level in 15 countries.

Quality Problem Or Issue: OECD member states are involved since 2003 in a project coordinated by the OECD on Health Care Quality Indicators (HCQI). All OECD countries are biennially requested by the OECD to deliver national data on the quality indicators for international benchmarking purposes.

Initial Assessment: Currently, there is no knowledge whether the OECD HCQI information is used by the countries themselves for healthcare system accountability and improvement purposes.

Health technology assessment in Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria.

This paper describes and discusses the development and use of health technology assessment (HTA) in five Central and Eastern European countries (CEE): Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. It provides a general snapshot of HTA policies in the selected CEE countries to date by focusing on country case-studies based on document analysis and expert opinion. It offers an overview of similarities and differences between the individual CEE countries and discusses in detail the role of HTA by assessing its formalization and institutionalization, standardization of methodology, the use of HTA in practice and the degree of professionalization of HTA in the region.