Marked differences were observed in the weighting of the criteria between different professional groups. As the invitation to participate in the weighting was sent to various institutions and often forwarded further, it is not feasible to estimate the response rate. However, we received responses from at least one member of each contacted institution. The weighting of criteria is likely to correlate with societal values and reflect socio-economic, cultural and health system structure in a country. The fact that in Germany the criterion ''Case fatality rate'' was considered to be of the most importance, may reflect the high level of individualization and relative affluence of the German health care system. Comparisons to other countries are difficult since similar studies are lacking. One of the few other priority-setting initiatives with an explicit weighting procedure was conducted in Spain in which the criterion ''Burden and importance of illness'' was identified to be among the first three most relevant from a total of nine criteria, the other two being ''Potential to change health outcomes'' and ''Potential to translate new knowledge into clinical or health services practices'' [5] . We can conclude that weighting needs to be explicitly addressed in any prioritization exercise and it is particularly appropriate for a national public health institute in order to reflect expectations from a broad range of professionals as the respective stakeholders [30] . One way to even expand the societal perspective of the prioritization exercise could be to involve patients' representatives, similarly to how it has been done by Gooberman-Hill et al [31] , for example.