Proposals should address most of the following:

• Compare the use of currently existing (pharmacological, non-pharmacological and technological) healthcare interventions in specific population groups (or selected subgroups). While there is no restriction on diseases or conditions, preference will be given to proposals focusing on interventions with high public health relevance.
• Ensure acceptability and sustainability of the healthcare intervention through early involvement of ‘end users’ (e.g. patients, care providers) in the design of the study (integrating patient valued outcomes) and, where possible, in the research process including implementation. Additionally, proposals should take into account the diversity of health systems in different regions of Europe to allow large-scale uptake.
• Consider involving HTA bodies in order to create synergies and accelerate the practical implementation of the results. Where relevant, existing work of EU-funded projects such as EUnetHTA should be also taken into account.
• Consider issues of particular relevance for the target populations, for example, multimorbidity, complex chronic conditions, polypharmacy, substance misuse, vaccine efficacy, compliance, age, gender specificities and diseases with high societal burden (including but not limited to e.g. musculoskeletal diseases and mental health disorders). Special consideration should be given to fulfilling all ethical requirements.
• For the chosen population, assess clinical and safety parameters, as well as health and socio-economic outcomes (e.g. quality of life, patient mortality, (co)morbidity, costs, and performance of the health system). 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. Consider using new instruments and methods for determining the burden of disease and for evaluating the effects of the interventions. Low-cost innovations should also be considered.
• Inclusion of patient organisations and associations of caregivers and other healthcare professionals is recommended.
• Clinical trials, including pragmatic clinical trials, observational studies, use of existing health data in different study designs, creation of large-scale databases and performing meta-analyses may be considered for this topic. Use of existing data should always be considered to add value, increase quality and increase implementation speed of the study. Regarding databases, sustainability after the proposed action’s end also needs to be considered.