The European Observatory on Health Systems & Policies supports and promotes evidence-based health policy-making through comprehensive and rigorous analysis of health systems in Europe. It brings together a wide range of policy-makers, academics and practitioners to analyse trends in health reform, drawing on experience from across Europe to illuminate policy issues.

The Observatory has four core functions:

- Country monitoring: providing analytic and evaluative descriptions of country health systems and systematically monitoring developments;
- Analysis: exploring how health systems ‘work’ through secondary and comparative research, multi-disciplinary studies and policy briefs on key challenges;
- Performance assessment: supporting the development and interpretation of indicators for practical policy use and to help improve performance;
- Knowledge brokering: making Observatory evidence visible and useful to its target audiences by unpacking and sharing it in a range of formats.