Table 1 Examples of organisations in which an approach to setting priorities for evidence-informed policymaking can be beneficial

A number of different types of organisations have emerged to support evidence-informed policymaking. For example:

• The Strategic Policy Unit, based within the United Kingdom’s Department of Health, was set up to examine high-priority issues that need to be addressed within a timeline of weeks to months

• The Canadian Agency for Drugs and Therapeutics in Healthcare (http://www.cadth.ca), a national government-funded agency, provides a rapid-response function (called the Health Technology Inquiry Service) to Provincial Ministries of Health seeking input about which health technologies to introduce, cover or fund. Timelines range from 1-30 days

• An Evidence-Informed Policy Network (http://www.evipnet.org) in Vietnam has obtained funding to produce two policy briefs and convene two policy dialogues in the coming year to respond to the priorities of policymakers and stakeholders

• The European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies (http://www.euro.who.int/observatory) convenes a range of policy dialogues, including ‘rapid reaction seminars’ which can be organised at very short notice.

The On-call Facility for International Healthcare Comparisons (http://www.lshtm.ac.uk/ihc/index.html), located within the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, responds to direct requests from the United Kingdom’s Department of Health about how health systems in other high-income countries are addressing particular issues [29]

Each of these organisations must, implicitly or explicitly, have timelines within which they are prepared to work. They also need criteria to decide which issues warrant significant periods of their time and which issues warrant less, or even none at all. Processes to make these decisions are also required.