Onkológia 1/2008

PHARMACOECONOMICS – ITS POSITION IN DRUG POLICY

Pharmacoeconomics is an interdisciplinary scientific branch dealing with the economic aspect of healthcare providing. It doesn´t mean to save money neck or nothing. It presents one of the tools helping to the responsible organizators of healthcare in decision-making how to use for the best the limited financial sources to satisfy the most of sick people in acceptable quality level. The number and the quality of pharmacoeconomic studies achieved the increasing trend. Pharmacoeconomics is still young scientific field, exposed to the doubts and critique. Despite of this, it becomes the part of the decisionmaking processes of the health and the drug politics. As the affirmation „ medicine or healthcare is not only the science, but also an art“ says, it is essential to percieve and develop the pharmacoeconomics as one of the helping but important instrument of the rationalization of the medical methods.

Keywords: pharmacoeconomics, financial resources, drug policy, healthcare