Interview: European collaboration in relative effectiveness assessment: the use of patient registries and development of common guidelines.

Wim Goettsch is currently the Project Leader of Work Package 5 of the European Network of Health Technology Assessment (EUnetHTA) Joint Action 2 (2012-2015). EUnetHTA is a network of the health technology assessment organizations in Europe responsible for advising or deciding on the national reimbursement of pharmaceuticals and other health technologies. In this work package, rapid joint assessments of the relative effectiveness of pharmaceuticals are piloted between more than 25 health technology assessment organizations around Europe. These pilots are based on the methodology that was developed in a similar work package in EUnetHTA JA1 (2010-2012), of which Dr Goettsch was also the Project Leader. Until the beginning of 2013, Dr Goettsch was the Deputy Secretary of the Medicinal Products Reimbursement Committee at Dutch Healthcare Insurance Board (CVZ). The Dutch Medicinal Products Reimbursement Committee advises the Dutch Minister of Health on whether new drugs need to be included in the basic insurance package. Before joining CVZ, he worked as a research manager for the PHARMO Institute (Utrecht, The Netherlands) and was responsible for the coordination of numerous pharmacoepidemiological and outcomes studies for international offices of pharmaceutical companies, such as AstraZeneca, Novartis, Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline. Dr Goettsch has approximately 50 publications in peer-reviewed international journals.