To promote innovative cross-sectoral forms of care and for health care research, an innovation fund financed by the health insurance companies is to be created, 75 percent of which will flow into research into the content of standard care and a quarter into health care research. That's at least 75 million euros for health services research alone, far less than the German Network for Health Services Research and the Health Advisory Council have been calling for around 300 million euros for many years, but still. Josef Hecken, the impartial chairman of the Federal Joint Committee, has already announced that the first money from this fund should flow in the second half of 2014. The question will be: where does this money go? And: What exactly should be researched? Will it be outcome-driven research that works top down from the most important to the less important topics. Incidentally, such a maxim for action was included in the key points paper of a “National Action Plan for Health Services Research”, which was presented jointly by the German Network for Health Care Research and the Bertelsmann Foundation in the Bertelsmann representative office at Unter den Linden 1, the former commandant's house in Berlin, the very room in which the 4th The specialist congress of “Monitor Healthcare Research” took place under the title “Innovation 2014” and in cooperation with the Bertelsmann company arvato healthcare and the BKK umbrella organization.

Read more