Research

The three pillars of CIRS activities

Metrics

Evidence-driven insights into company and agency performance

Quality

Improving decision-making processes during the medical product life cycle

Alignment

Converging stakeholder priorities and processes to accelerate patient access

CIRS provides unique insights and an independent viewpoint on the performance of companies, regulatory and HTA agencies through its metrics programmes. Data are collected and analysed to give a better understanding of regulatory and HTA assessment times and evidentiary requirements. This form of benchmarking details regulatory and HTA processes and practices, identifies where improvements can be made and informs company and agency strategies.

CIRS works with companies and agencies to evaluate the quality of their processes, identify challenges, and implement best practices. Tools developed from these projects support decision-making practices and their documentation in general or are specific to areas such as benefit-risk assessment. The aim is to foster learning and improve transparency, predictability and consistency of critical decisions during development, regulatory review and HTA.

Through collaborative research projects and multi-stakeholder workshops, CIRS promotes harmonisation and alignment across HTA and regulatory agencies, as well as between HTAs and regulators themselves. Not only does this facilitate capacity building but also helps to enable more efficient and effective development of medicines.

These three pillars form the foundation of CIRS’ research strategy, which is reviewed every three years. Find out more about CIRS’ 2024-2026 research strategy.