Treatment of patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) demands a great deal of time and technology, which physicians and healthcare systems tend to have in short supply. COPD is the fourth leading cause of death in the US and the disease is severely under-diagnosed. Many...

Increasing healthcare expenditures and other economic pressures mandate fundamental reforms of the healthcare system in Germany. The overall goal is restraint of costs while at the same time maintaining a high standard of medical care. Among all options, managed care represents a potential...

HIV/AIDS currently affects about 31 million people worldwide. Many infected people do not receive proper care because of a lack of resources or education about current treatment options. Even where treatments are available, they are often not optimal because of poor adherence, adverse events or...

Clinical guidelines are controversial devices. While some are objective, current, evidence-based and of excellent quality, others are biased, consensus-based, obsolete and lack quality assurance effort. The problem for the clinician is determining which is which. There are no international...

Achieving the support of physicians is perhaps the most difficult challenge to successfully implementing a disease management programme. Most physicians are sceptical of disease management initiatives. Many perceive these programmes to be a threat to their professional autonomy or an...

Managed care presents interesting opportunities to optimize clinical and economic outcomes related to drug prescribing. There are very few randomized controlled trials that have evaluated methods to educate or incentivize physicians, implement formulary management or guideline tools, profile...

The Internet has changed healthcare practice and has just begun to influence pharmaceutical consumers and providers. The Internet firstly affects the pharmaceutical consumer through the five main functions it offers to all consumers of care. These functions are: 1. to provide and distribute...

Overactive bladder (OAB), a common condition affecting ~=16-17% of adult men and women in Europe and the US, is characterized by symptoms of urinary urgency, with or without urge urinary incontinence (UUI), usually with micturition frequency and nocturia. OAB is thought to result from abnormal,...

Current guidelines recommend the use of warfarin in all patients with atrial fibrillation (AF) and/or an artificial heart valve who are at high risk of thromboembolism. While anticoagulation with warfarin greatly reduces this risk, a careful system of monitoring and management is necessary to...

The rapid increase in telemedicine technologies has increased the demand for assessment studies to inform decision makers as to how feasible, efficient, effective, cost effective and/or cost saving the new technology is compared with a conventional alternative. In this article, we considered the...