Two institutes: IQWiG and IQTIG

IQWiG and IQTIG both aim to improve the quality of health care in Germany. IQWiG is the “Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care” and IQTIG is the “Institute for Quality Assurance and Transparency in Health Care.” IQWiG assesses the benefits and harms of medications, for example. IQTIG looks into ways to measure the quality of health care in Germany, among other things.
The German names of these institutes don’t exactly roll off the tongue: “Institut für Qualität und Wirtschaftlichkeit im Gesundheitswesen” (IQWiG) and “Institut für Qualitätssicherung und Transparenz im Gesundheitswesen” (IQTIG) are more like tongue-twisters and sound pretty similar at first. But they’re actually two separate, independent scientific institutes that fulfill important tasks in the German healthcare system, and have a legal duty to do so. They have different focuses:
- IQWiG mainly assesses the benefits and risks of medical interventions, such as treatment with medications or surgical procedures.
- IQTIG's main task is to assess the quality of health care in medical practices and hospitals in Germany.
The two institutes do research in these areas to provide a sound scientific basis for decisions that are made in the German public health sector. Their scientific findings are taken into account when deciding, for example, which medical services should be paid for by public (statutory) health insurers and how the quality of healthcare provision can be improved.
IQWiG is also the author of our website (InformedHealth.org), which is the English version of the German website gesundheitsinformation.de. With the help of these websites, IQWiG aims to fulfill its legal duty to provide all German citizens with health information that is easy to understand and scientifically sound.