The primary purpose of pharmacoeconomic research is to assist in making healthcare decisions. Rapid growth in the supply of pharmacoeconomic data over the past few years suggests that pharmacoeconomics can be of help in delivering good, cost-effective healthcare. Greater challenges in...

Disease management is a systematic approach to a health condition or a healthcare intervention that organises preventative, interventional and care approaches throughout the continuum of care and which measures outcomes in terms of populations, not individuals. Disease management's advantage...

Objective: This model introduces a unique and inexpensive technique to estimate profit increases that might be expected from: (i) an additional clinical trial to establish a drug's second clinical indication; and (ii) a survey of market demand. Design: Microsoft Excel_ spreadsheets are used to...

Companies merge to achieve economies of scale. In an industry such as the pharmaceutical industry which relies on a high level of investment in research and development, such mergers appear rational. However, it is not at all obvious that a higher level of investment by a smaller number of firms...

This article describes the components that should be included as indirect costs to be consistent with economic theory in studies conducted from a societal perspective. The recently proposed method of how to estimate indirect costs, the friction-cost approach, is shown to exclude many aspects of...

Traditionally, US teaching hospitals have subsidised research by charging higher costs for treatment; however, this approach is being challenged. The growth of managed-care organisations, concerned about maximising profits, has led many to argue that clinical research will be damaged, whether by...

Short term health effects can significantly impact health-related quality of life (HR-QOL). Appropriate healthcare priorities can be set only if they are based on health status measurements which are consistent with how people value both short and long term health effects. This article discusses...