Background: Reimbursement of new drugs is usually based on the budgetary impact of a new drug but there is also increasing demand for cost-effectiveness data on new drugs. Objective: To present a modelling technique (methodology) for an appropriate assessment of the budgetary impact of a new...

Objective: To assess the cost effectiveness of emedastine, a new antihistamine, versus levocabastine in the treatment of acute allergic conjunctivitis (AAC) in Belgium, France, Germany, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal and Sweden. Design and setting: Randomised double-blind multicountry...

Economic analysis has become increasingly important in healthcare in general, and particularly with respect to pharmaceuticals. Therefore, it is vital that the methods used in such evaluations are carefully scrutinised and refined. However, guidelines contain only a limited number of...

This article explores the need to perform pharmacoeconomic evaluations of herbal medicines and assesses the extent to which this approach has been applied so far to these products. There seems to be no compelling need for pharmacoeconomic analyses of herbal over-the-counter medicines, but such...

Objective: The objective of this study was to compare the total costs associated with the administration of two different tumour necrosis factor (TNF) strategies used in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis (RA): etanercept, a soluble TNF receptor that can be administered at home by...

Objective: To improve the quality of the methods used in Markov modelling studies by increasing the external validity by means of the incorporation of confounding variables. Study design: The concepts were illustrated using a hypothetical Markov model for Parkinson's disease. Methods: The...

The ideal study design for demonstrating the possible health outcomes and costs associated with a new drug would be a naturalistic prospective study. However, it is not often feasible to derive the required information from scientifically sound prospective studies. In these cases, decision...

There is increasing use of economic evaluation to support decision-makers in health services for allocation of scarce healthcare resources. However, information necessary for economic evaluations cannot always be derived from well-conducted prospective clinical studies, and decision-analytical...

Objective: The aim of the present study is to describe a refinement of a previously presented method, based on the concept of point sensitivity, to deal with uncertainty in economic studies. Design: The original method was refined by the incorporation of probability distributions which allow a...

This article presents the first version of the reporting format for economic valuation that was created in 1995 by a multidisciplinary taskforce. The members of this taskforce come from a broad spectrum of backgrounds within the healthcare field and participated in the exercise voluntarily. The...