Welcome to the website of the "Outpatient Care and Pharmacoepidemiology" section of the Department of Health Services Research.

On the one hand, the department deals with aspects of health care epidemiology and health care structure research. On the other hand, we deal with questions of drug therapy safety and the use of drugs in the population as a whole or in certain sections of the population. The focus here is on healthcare provision in the outpatient sector. In this context, co-operation with the Department of General Medicine and other clinical partners or those involved in the provision of care is of particular importance.

Our research focus includes the investigation of care processes and quality as well as the utilisation of healthcare services with a focus on drug therapy for children and adolescents, elderly and multimorbid persons, persons in need of care as well as dementia and other mental illnesses. Regional and social differences are of particular importance here. We also analyse the effects of health policy decisions and other health system-related issues.

One methodological focus of our department is working with secondary data in the healthcare system, whereby analysing the possibilities and limitations of this data and combining it with other data sources or primary surveys also plays an important role.

The aim of healthcare research is to ensure that scientific findings reach patients. We are committed to the principles of evidence-based health care (EbHC) in our teaching and research and would like our work to contribute to better health care in the region and beyond.

We work closely with OFFIS and the various health science research institutes at the University of Bremen as part of projects and co-operations. These include the Centre for Social Policy (ZeS), the Institute for Public Health and Nursing Research (IPP) and the Leibniz Institute for Prevention Research and Epidemiology (BIPS). Our partners also include the German Rheumatism Research Centre (DRFZ), Marburg University Hospital, the University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG) and King's College London.