ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces a range of technical and policy issues that underpin pharmacoeconomic analyses. It provides practical guidance as to how to design and undertake a pharmacoeconomic study and how to address the technical issues that inevitably arise during the course of such analyses. It also cautions against an undue reliance on imposing an unthinking mechanistic application of the results of pharmacoeconomic analyses without a detailed consideration of the distributional and other policy relevant implications arising from the results. In addition, it provides an insight into the role of pharmacoeconomic analyses in informing the policy making process and in optimising the use of scarce healthcare resources. A detailed introduction is provided to the role of discounting in generating net present values that can be used to inform decisions in situations where costs and benefits may be spread over a number of years.
