Evidence of a significant vaccine policy shift can be witnessed not only in the number of new vaccines available in Japan but also in the way that vaccine policy is being formulated. In 2010, policy makers decided for the first time ever to commission economic analyses as a reference in their...

In a wide range of health care jurisdictions, to give priority to the severely ill over the less severely ill is important in decisions about resource allocation across patient groups. We summarise data on concerns for severity measured at a cardinal level in preference studies in various...

The number of biological agents (BAs) registered with an indication related to cancer treatment is flourishing and the cost of these treatments is rising dramatically, making the situation potentially unsustainable for healthcare systems. Here we focus on the examples of bevacizumab (BV) and...

Severity of illness is an important official criterion for priority setting in health care in a number of jurisdictions. An 8-point scale of severity and functional status has been used in a number of studies in Norway in order to estimate the strength of concerns for severity in population...

Recent focus on cost-benefit/socio-economic assessment of government “life-saving” programmes within public health, pharmaceutics, transport, and civil contingencies has spurred a wave of empirical research on the value of a statistical life (VSL) in Sweden. This paper provides an overview...

Health policies from many countries recommend influenza vaccination of “high-priority” professional groups, including customs officers. Our aim was to estimate the economic impact of the vaccination program against influenza among customs officers in Greece during the 2009/2010 period.

Trastuzumab (TR), a monoclonal antibody approved by EMA in 2000 and one of the first examples of “targeted therapy”, is indicated to treat human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) positive breast cancer. TR, whose patent will expire in 2015 in Europe, has been judged positively for...