What is pharmacoeconomics?

Pharmacoeconomics is the specific application of the principles and methods of economics in the field of medicine.

Pharmaceutical Economics in a broad sense mainly studies the economic behavior of drug suppliers and consumers, drug market pricing under the interaction between supply and demand, and various intervention policies and measures in the field of drugs.

Pharmacoeconomics in a narrow sense is the application of the basic principles, methods and techniques of economics to the clinical drug diagnosis and treatment process. Guided by the crowd view of pharmacoepidemiology, the study is carried out from the perspectives of society, medical insurance, hospitals, patients and so on, in order to make the best use of the existing medical hygiene. Comprehensive applied science of resources.

Two, the motive force for enterprises to make pharmacoeconomic evaluation.

1. production and operation needs

Enterprises hope to fully elaborate the value of their products, form a complete product evidence chain, and based on this, communicate with the government and hospitals. A good medicine should be safe and effective and reasonable in price. Safety and effectiveness are mainly reflected by clinical research and observation results. Whether the price and cost are reasonable or not needs to be evaluated by pharmacoeconomics research. So a complete product evidence chain should contain economic research evidence to respond to the demands of society and government.

At all stages of the drug life cycle, the right time can be chosen to carry out pharmacoeconomics research.

Firstly, after compound screening and animal experiments, pharmaceutical companies will face a very important choice: whether to enter the clinical trial stage. Some leading international pharmaceutical enterprises begin to evaluate pharmacoeconomics in this link and carry out economic discussions: what effect will this drug have in clinical practice when it will be on the market in the future? What kind of price can be set? What kind of business rewards can you get? Enterprises use this to help decide whether the product should enter clinical trials, because the investment in clinical trials is considerable.

Then, in the phase of clinical trials of drugs, especially in the late phase of phase III clinical studies, that is, half a year to one year before the market, it is a very good time to carry out pharmacoeconomics research. Because at this time, enterprises have obtained the results of three clinical phases, and can carry out pharmacoeconomic evaluation based on clinical data. In this way, when the product is on the market, there are not only clinical data but also economic evidence, thus forming a complete evidence chain to support the market access and marketing of new products.

Finally, based on the needs of market strategy, various pharmacoeconomic studies can be carried out flexibly to help pharmaceutical enterprises better promote their products after the product is on the market.

Finally, it should be pointed out that pharmaceutical economics is closely related to the pricing strategy of enterprises, and the economic research done in each link is to support its pricing and market strategy.

2. health insurance requirements

The 2017 edition of China's medical insurance catalogue adjustment put forward dynamic adjustment, negotiation catalogue and other mechanisms, and began to require enterprises to submit pharmacoeconomic data, which greatly promoted the application of this discipline in China's pharmaceutical industry, and many enterprises began to actively do this.

Pharmacoeconomics research includes cost performance research and budget analysis. Cost-effective ratio is the input and output of this drug, such as, budget analysis is to study how much health insurance costs for this drug, whether it can be affordable. In this national health insurance negotiation, it is necessary to forecast the budgetary impact of drugs, that is, to ask enterprises to estimate the sales volume and price of products after entering the health insurance, so as to calculate the impact of the drugs on the health insurance budget after entering the health insurance. For the cost-performance ratio research is optional for enterprises, there are no mandatory and clear provisions for medical insurance, and many enterprises are lack of cost-performance ratio research data.

Local health insurance also has many policy explorations in this area. For example, Tianjin, Guangzhou and other places have commissioned research institutions to explore access decision support methods based on pharmacoeconomic evaluation, including what information enterprises need to submit, how to evaluate data quality, and how to score. These experiences will also affect the formulation of national health insurance policies in the future.

The requirement of medical insurance for pharmacoeconomic data and policy attempt show that our country has begun to attach importance to the formal application of pharmacoeconomics. Although the application level of pharmacoeconomics in China is still at a preliminary stage of development, there are defects and obstacles, we should also see promising and progress. This is a process and a trend for the future. Enterprises should take precautions.