Estudios de farmacoeconomía: ¿por qué, cómo, cuándo y para qué?

C u rre n t l y, re s o u rces that may be spent in phar macoeconomics expenditure are limited so it is ne c e s s a ry to rationalize their consumption and priorize in the allocation of these re s o u rces to the options with higher economic advantages. Pharmacoeconomic studies will permit us to know what is the efficiency of different therapeutic alternatives so they will help to determine the the rapeutic options that we should use in routine me dical practice. We have different pharmacoeconomic studies: cost-benefit analysis, cost-effectiveness analysis, cost-utility analysis, cost-minimization analysis and cost of disease studies. They can be performed by using prospective designs (alongside clinical trials and observational studies), re t rospective and p redictive designs (by carrying out pharmacoeco nomic models), and integrating in the different pha ses of clinical development programs of new medi c i n e s . The information of pharmacoeconomic studies will be important when negotiating price and re i m bursement of new drugs as well as if we want that in both Primary Health Care and Hospital Care settings the therapeutic alternatives with the best cost/effectiveness relationship will be used ro u t i n a re l y.