In the summer of 1990, the Australian government took a major step by requiring evidence of cost-effectiveness of new medicines prior to reimbursement by the public health care system. This paper assesses whether the methodological principles behind the guidelines are sound and whether they...

Disease management is attracting considerable attention from the pharmaceutical industry, which sees this as a way of extending its activities beyond drug development to health care management and organisation. However, it is unclear whether disease management offers advantages to the NHS or...

The increased pressures on health care budgets have emphasised the need to demonstrate the value for money from health technologies. Most major pharmaceutical companies have therefore commissioned cost-benefit or cost-effectiveness analysis of their products. There is an assumed analogy between...