[Prioritization of research questions in health crises-presentation of a concept developed during the COVID-19 pandemic].

Abstract

In acute crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic, scientific questions need to be addressed quickly in order to protect the health of the population and to maintain the function of the healthcare system. The prevailing urgency and the large number of issues to be addressed, combined with the limitation of time, personnel, or monetary resources make prioritization indispensable. In the COVID-19 Evidence Ecosystem (CEOsys) project initiated by the University Medicine Network (NUM), a procedure for the rapid prioritization of questions was used specifically for evidence syntheses and clinical guideline recommendations, which was further developed in the follow-up project PREparedness and Pandemic Response in Germany (PREPARED).The result is a concept paper on the prioritization of research questions and topics with a more generic orientation. The content of the concept is presented in this article. The core subjects are basic principles of successful prioritization as well as an explicit seven-step process with information on organizational framework conditions and the procedure. The concept offers possibilities for adaptation, as research prioritization is highly context-dependent.The application of such a systematic, transparent prioritization process contributes to comprehensible and informed decisions about which research questions are relevant and urgent, in which order they should be processed, and which issues are not critically urgent or have to be postponed.