It is imperative that health care resources are spent as efficiently as possible by committing them to demonstrably cost-effective treatments and procedures. The NHS reforms of 1989 aimed to help achieve this by separating out the roles of purchaser and provider. In doing so, ‘trade’ between...

Pharmaceutical prescribing currently represents around 10% of total National Health Service expenditure, and is one of the most inflationary elements of spending (Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology 1993). Between 1980 and 1990, the overall cost of a prescription increased by 19%....

The fields of pharmacogenetics and pharmacogenomics have become important practical tools to progress goals in medical and pharmaceutical research and development. As more screening tests are being developed, with some already used in clinical practice, consideration of cost-effectiveness...

Background: Heparin-induced thrombocytopenia (HIT) is a rare but serious complication of heparin therapy. The diagnosis of HIT is difficult because its signs are non-specific and the heparin-platelet factor 4 (PF4) antibody test used to confirm the diagnosis is imprecise. Drugs used to treat HIT...

The purpose of this paper is to argue that systematic data heterogeneity exists when the objective of pharmacotherapy is improved health-related quality of life (HR-QOL), and that the pharmacotherapy's cost effectiveness will vary inversely with the patient's baseline HR-QOL (BHR-QOL), the...

With an aging population and increased prevalence of chronic diseases, such as obesity and diabetes mellitus, drug reforms are needed across Europe to ensure the continued provision of comprehensive healthcare. It is also a challenge, with the limited resources available, to fund new innovative...

This paper describes the key principles of why an assessment of uncertainty and its consequences are critical for the types of decisions that a body such as the UK National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) has to make. In doing so, it poses the question of whether formal...