Parallel trade in pharmaceuticals has become a major European Union policy issue with several `solutions' being considered by the European Commission, Member State governments and the pharmaceutical industry in the `Bangemann Process'. This paper discusses the issues from an economic and public...

This paper analyzes pharmaceutical pricing between and within countries to achieve second best static and dynamic efficiency. We distinguish countries with and without universal insurance, because insurance undermines patients' price sensitivity, potentially leading to prices above second-best...

• Biopharmaceuticals are more complex agents than conventional chemical entities and therefore are more difficult to replicate on patent expiry. Off-patent versions of the originator product cannot rely on a simple demonstration of chemical comparability. They are best described as...

This Briefing contains a summary of the main points and conclusions from a roundtable organised and facilitated by the Office of Health Economics, together with a summary of the briefing material provided to the participants. The Roundtable was funded by an unrestricted research grant from...

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is becoming a major global public health threat, contributing to the growing problem of drug resistance, a naturally occurring consequence of treating infectious diseases with drugs. Recently, AMR has begun to command attention from European policy makers whose...

Most European Member States, particularly the former EU15 countries, have national systems providing universal access to health care, including pharmaceuticals. Given pressure on public budgets and rising expenditure for healthcare, national governments have introduced mechanisms to regulate...

Interest is growing in schemes that involve “paying for pills by results” (Pollock, 2007), i.e. “paying for performance” rather than merely “paying for pills”. Hard-pressed health care payers want to know that they are getting what they are paying for health interventions and other...

Looking at how well drugs work in routine clinical practice, rather than only in experimental randomised controlled clinical trials (RCTs), is increasingly seen as essential for a proper assessment of both net benefit (health gain minus harm and value (net benefit minus net cost). Establishing...