Pharmacoeconomics in the area of health technology assessment and outcomes research to prioritize resource use, innovation and investment

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Background

Pharmacoeconomics aims to guide optimal therapeutic resource allocation and drug use, based on standardized and scientifically grounded methods. Pharmacoeconomics primarily centers on the economic evaluation of pharmaceuticals, but also on medication-related issues, such as drug safety, outcome measure (patient well-being, quality-of-life assessment), optimal use of pre-emptive pharmacogenomic tests, phenotyping, or therapeutic drug monitoring. Further, in addition to unique pharmacological treatments, pharmacoeconomics issues could encompass a wide range of healthcare interventions, such as combined diagnostic procedures, combined pharmaceutical devices, personalized medicine, and surgery associated with preliminary treatments and follow-up.

Eventually, pharmacoeconomics compares value of several therapeutic options or drug therapies to other strategies. Pharmacoeconomics is closely linked to pharmaco-epidemiology and drug outcomes research to guide policy makers, health authorities, clinicians, and innovation scientists.

Pharmacoeconomic analyses are increasingly used to help decision-makers to assess the value of new medications and to comply with value-based pricing principles. Pharmacoeconomics depends on the national health care systems, policy, and population expectations. Costs, decision threshold, model validation, and willingness-to-pay vary from a country to another one: gross domestic product is often used as a crude indicator to set decision thresholds, i.e. maximal amount of money per quality-adjusted life-year (QALY).

The goal of pharmacoeconomics is to determine whether the expense incurred by the use of a treatment strategy (only drugs, pre-emptive or reactive pharmacogenetic tests, intensity / frequency of monitoring, combination of medications and intervention, etc... ) is justified in comparison with the cost of existing medication and other means. Potential savings could result from better quality-of-life, extended life expectancy, a decrease in the number of follow-up, emergency room visits, length of stay or number of hospitalizations, ancillary or intangible costs (family, caregiver), and the number of days of work lost by patients taking the alternative drugs or innovative medication.

For this Research Topic, Frontiers in Pharmacology is particularly interested in receiving articles in the following areas of pharmacoeconomics:

1. Cost-effectiveness analyses on treatment-related strategies; economic evaluations on therapeutic management should assess the expected benefits and consequences of alternative medications. They should be implementable with implications in health care policy. Ideally, uncertainty around model and input parameters will be addressed using probabilistic approaches.

2. Health technology assessment (HTA): comparative effectiveness research to elaborate guidelines and help health authorities to efficiently allocate healthcare resources by examining the added value of new therapeutics. Submitted articles could report outcomes from primary research or present findings from meta-analyses or systematic reviews.

3. Instruments to derive patient-reported outcomes (PRO) and health-related quality of life (QoL) from clinical trials assessing drug interventions (typically as secondary outcomes). Articles presenting research on the development of instruments (eg, questionnaires, scores) to elicitate intangible estimates (eg, patients' well-being) and provide PRO/QoL measures would candidate for the research topic.

Keywords: Pharmacoeconomics, Cost-effectiveness analysis, HTA (Health technology Assessment), Quality-of-life, Decision analytical model, Willingness-to-pay threshold, Value-based pricing, Patient elicitation

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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