What is the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies?

The Observatory is a partnership that brings together different policy perspectives to identify what health systems and policies evidence Europe’s decision makers need. The Observatory then generates and shares the evidence in print, in person and online – acting as a knowledge broker and bridging the gap between academia and practice. 

What does the European Observatory do? A mission to bring evidence to policy

The Observatory was created in 1998 to give Europe’s health policy-makers and their advisors the evidence they need to design and implement the best possible policies for their countries. Its mission is to support and promote evidence-informed policy making and it does this by working in partnership on the: 

• Rigorous comparative analysis of European health systems and trends; 
• Production of timely and reliable evidence in response to ‘real’ policy needs; and 
• Communication of evidence in ways that are useful to policy-makers. 

The Observatory has four core functions:

Country monitoring: providing analytic and evaluative descriptions of country health systems and systematically monitoring developments;

Analysis: exploring how health systems ‘work’ through secondary and comparative research, multi-disciplinary studies and policy briefs on key and emerging challenges;

Performance assessment: supporting the development and interpretation of indicators for practical policy use and to help improve performance;

Knowledge brokering: making Observatory evidence visible and useful to its target audiences by unpacking and sharing it in a range of formats.

For the partnership period 2019-23, the European Observatory has four analytic priorities that reflect Europe’s health systems challenges:

• Economics of health and health systems;
• Governance for better public health;
• Organizational models, skill mix and financing for effective integrated care;
• Implementing organizational and technological innovation.