engleski

Pharmacoeconomics and drug value assessment

Pharmacoeconomics is defined as a scientific discipline which analyses the values of one medicine or medical intervention to another. Pharmacoeconomics uses four main types of evaluation i.e. cost-minimization (CMA), cost-benefit (CBA), cost- effectiveness (CEA), and cost-utility analyses (CUA). These analyses provide healthcare decision-makers with valuable information and have been used to guide optimal healthcare resource allocation in a standardized and scientifically grounded manner. When conducting pharmacoeconomic analyses, researchers often struggle with limited local epidemiological and cost data. The most frequently used analysis is CEA which is a technique that is most appropriately applied when a choice must be made between two or more competing options for which the expected health gains can be expressed in terms of a common outcome measure. CEA has been described as a technique for making decisions at the margin, in situations where the formulated question may be “Is it worth spending an additional financial mean (e.g. Euro) to achieve the additional benefits offered by the new drug compared to existing therapy?” It would be complicated and time-consuming to rank all available health care technologies according to their cost-effectiveness, therefore the cost-effectiveness criteria are assessed mainly for the new and expensive therapies in the majority of countries. Pharmacoeconomic evaluation should, also, be relevant to decisions about the pricing and reimbursement of different procedures and health technologies, since it offers a way of estimating the additional value to society of a new intervention (e.g. medicine) in comparison to existing therapy. Furthermore, the importance of pharmacoeconomics as a part of evidence based health policy is widely acknowledged.

Pharmacoeconomics ; Reimbursement ; Cost-minimization ; Cost-benefit ; Cost-effectiveness ; Cost-utility analyses

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