History and structure
The Belgian Health Care Knowledge Centre (KCE) is a semi-governmental institution, constituted by the law of 24 December 2002. The KCE is independent from the federal government. Most of its activities are commissioned by the Ministry of Public Health and Social Affairs and the National Health and Invalidity Insurance.  As from 2004, KCE is a member of INAHTA.
The KCE consists of a Board of Directors that approves or disapproves the validation of all reports before they are disclosed to the public. A scientific advisory committee supports the KCE in the realization of scientific excellence. The KCE has a permanent staff of 40 people at this moment of which 4 directors, 25 experts and 11 administrative staff members. The experts come from different disciplines, including medicine, economics, statistics, sociology, psychology and law. There is one general director, one vice-general director and two programme managers.

Mission
The mission of the KCE is to advice policy makers about the possibilities to obtain an efficient allocation of scarce health care resources that optimizes the quality and accessibility of health care.

The KCE has four domains of research:

1. Health technology assessment
2. Good clinical practice
3. Health services research

The aims of the KCE can be summarized as follows:

1. Production of analyses and studies in the different research domains in which decisions must be taken
2. Collecting and disseminating objective information from registered data, literature and current practice
3. Developing high level scientific expertise in the four research domains.

How KCE works
Research topics are planned and prioritized in collaboration with the Board of KCE. Topic proposals can be submitted throughout the year by anyone from the Belgian population and are evaluated once a year.
Research projects are performed by internal experts or in commissioned to an external partner, such as a university, an ad hoc research group consisting of researchers from different organisations, or another research organization. All projects are supervised by experts from the KCE.
The KCE can rely on an external knowledge network that guarantees fully independent recommendations based on the state-of-the art scientific evidence. For each project, external experts are involved in the study. They help to pinpoint the hot issues as well as to identify the most recent developments in the field. In the final stage of the report development, a number of external validators is asked to critically review the report. The validators can formulate their comments and request modification or can reject or approve the report. Conflicts of interest are disclosed by both the external experts and the external validators.

Dissemination activities
Reports from the KCE are published on the website at www.kenniscentrum.fgov.be. Scientific reports are in English, with an executive summary in English, Dutch and French. In addition, the KCE publishes press releases on its web-site in order to disseminate the message to the general public. 
The KCE regularly organizes seminars on topics within the three research domains of the centre. These seminars are open to all interested parties in the health care sector.

Current projects (a selection)
Current projects in the domain of HTA are:

• Robot surgery
• Policy with respect to orphan drugs
• HIFU for prostate cancer
• Laparoscopic heart valve replacement
• Chronic renal failure management
• Point-of-care oral anticoagulation therapy
• The value of ICERs and ICER threshold values for health care policy making

The full list of ongoing and completed HTA reports can be found at www.kce.fgov.be.

Future plans 

• To improve the uptake and facilitate the integration of HTA reports in health care policy making in Belgium
• To develop high level expertise in the domain of HTA by means of international networking and continuous training of the experts.