Importance of Pharmacoeconomics in the Pharmacovigilance for National Health Systems

The objective of this study is to conduct a literature review to assess the importance of pharmacoeconomics in developing pharmacovigilance activities as a working tool to guide the process of decision making in the health field. The authors have done a literature review in order to find information about pharmacovigilance and their relationship with the pharmacoeconomics field, as an important element to assess the economic and health consequences because of the use of drugs in health systems. From this study, it can be found that pharmacoeconomics applied to the pharmacovigilance activities should be considered as an aspect that contributes to improving the rational use of medicines, because it allows to compare the costs and consequences (beneficial and detrimental) with the use of different pharmacotherapeutic alternatives, in order to assess the negative effects due to ADRs (adverse drug reactions), which directly increase the morbidity and mortality in patients, increase the direct health costs and indirectly decrease the productivity labors. It can be also concluded that pharmacoeconomics constitutes an important aspect to the pharmacovigilance activity in the health systems, in order to evaluate the negative impact of ADR, both on patient health as its economic implications, due to associated costs with these adverse effects.