Pharmacoeconomics
Pharmacoeconomics
Pharmacoeconomics
DEFINITION
Compares the value of one pharmaceutical drug or drug therapy to another
It is a sub-discipline of health economics pharmacoeconomic study evaluates the cost (expressed in monetary terms) and effects (expressed in terms of monetary value, efficacy or enhanced quality of life) of a pharmaceutical product
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I.INTRODUCTION
In health care, efficiency may not be the most important objective -we might for instance prioritise caring for dying patients or treating patients with serious disease who have relatively little hope of surviving. Pharmacoeconomics is a branch of health economics that particularly considers drug therapy particular interest to pharmaceutical companies who in developing a new drug and after the traditional hurdles of efficacy, safety and tolerability must now jump over a fourth hurdle of cost effectiveness
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II.KEY CONCEPTS
EFFICIENCY : How to buy the greatest amount of benefit for a given resource use
OPPORTUNITY COST : benefit foregone when selecting one therapy alternative over the next best alternative INCREMENTAL ANALYSIS: what are its added costs and benefits, over and above those of the existing treatment
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RELATED CONCEPT
MARGINAL COST :The only costs which change may be those of having a patient physically occupy the bed -the costs of the patients meals, treatment and perhaps nursing time Incremental analysis is concerned with the marginal and not the average costs
COST CLASSIFICATION
Direct : costs from the perspective of the healthcare funder: including staff costs, capital costs, drug acquisition costs. These should (in theory) be relatively easy to measure Indirect : costs from the perspective of society as a whole: for example, these might include loss of earnings, loss of productivity, loss of leisure time, due to the illness, and cost of travel to hospital etc. Intangible : the pain, worry or other distress which a patient or their family might suffer. These may be impossible to measure in monetary terms, but are sometimes captured in measures of quality of life.
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BENEFITS
Natural units : e.g. years of life saved, strokes prevented, peptic ulcers healed etc.
Utility units : utility is an economists word for satisfaction, or sense of well being, and is an attempt to evaluate the quality of a state of health, and not just its quantity.
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COST-MINIMISATION
Cost-minimization is a tool used in pharmacoeconomics and is applied when comparing multiple drugs of equal efficacy and equal tolerability An example would be prescribing a generic preparation instead of the brand leader (lower cost but same health outcomes)
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QALY gain from treatment X = 7 - 2.5 = 4.5 QALYs If the cost of treatment X is 18,000 then the cost per QALY is 4,000 per QALY (18,000 divided between 4.5 additional QALYs)
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COMPARISION
METHOD
COST MINIMISATION ANALYSIS
Assumed to be equivalent and can take Additional costs of any form (e.g. therapy A relative to B number of cases detected, reductions in cholesterol levels, years of life saved Health benefits across therapies are measured in similar natural units Health benefits across therapies are valued in similar units based on individual preferences Measured in similar or different units and are always valued in monetary units (e.g., amount willing to pay to prevent a death, amount willing to pay to reduce exposure to a hazard) 17 Cost per life year gained Cost per patient cured, Cost per life saved, etc Cost per QALY gained
CHEAP
COST
LIMITATIONS
Health economics is therefore sometimes misused as a marketing ploy. The same problems may however arise in studies funded by health care payers. To a specialist, this is not such a problem since the almost inevitable biases are usually clear. But since economic evaluation is less well understood by doctors and others, bias needs to be minimized
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FUTURE
Economic evaluations of drug therapy are increasingly important in decision making.
Clinical pharmacologists should welcome this as a means to promote efficiency and effectiveness of prescribing.
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THANKYOU
BY SANTHOSH KUMAR SARAH KHALID SHAIMA
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