ABSTRACT
After Weinstein and Stason published “Foundations of cost-effectiveness analysis for health and medical practices” (1977), many developed countries adopted health economics (also referred to as pharmacoeconomics (PE) hereafter)1 in resourceallocation decision making. A majority of them have used health economics to evaluate pharmaceutical products. However, developing nations have not made similar advances (Singer 2008). Despite being the largest continent, with 60% of the world’s population and a fast-growing economy, Asia’s adoption of pharmacoeconomic evaluation has been slow over the past few years. So far only South Korea requires the use of pharmacoeconomic data in evaluation. Taiwan encourages the use of pharmacoeconomic data by offering premium pricing as an incentive, and Thailand is in the process of establishing such practice. The authorities in China and Japan have shown an interest in establishing a mechanism to formally incorporate pharmacoeconomic data into their decision making (Tarn et al. 2008; Yang 2009; EFPIA 2012; The Central People’s Government of the People’s Republic of China 2009).
