EU: Pluses And Minuses Of Pharmacoeconomics

Pharmaceutical companies should be wary of constantly stressing the cost-saving potential of their new products, Thomas Cueni, secretary general of Interpharma, told the PharmEcon Europe 95 meeting organized by ICBI, in Paris this month. An aggregate of industry pharmacoeconomic studies would show impressive economies deriving from new drugs, he said, but analyses of the factors raising health spending always reveal that innovation is the single most important driving factor.

While one often hears forecasts that pharmacoeconomic studies will become mandatory, he said, this has not happened in Europe nor the USA, and such prophecies could be dangerous. These studies can be very helpful when seeking a more rational policy or to highlight the shortcomings of cost-containment, and can facilitate decision-making on reimbursement levels, price adjustments, formularies and drug utilization reviews. But in a worst-case scenario, pharmacoeconomic guidelines can stifle innovative R&D and development of new and more reliable economic evaluative tools, and prolong and delay the drug approval and registration process.

The increasing relevance of such studies is industry-made, said Mr Cueni. The industry started to use them primarily as a marketing tool, and did this so successfully that it convinced health decision-makers that they are a reliable indicator for measuring the economic consequences of their decisions. They also convinced the regulators that some of the studies were of dubious quality, which has led to increasing pressure to establish agreed criteria, or even mandatory requirements for the good conduct of pharmacoeconomic evaluation.