Newly Defined Role of Pharmacoeconomics in Iran National Medicine Policy

Unlimited and mostly competing demands in health care systems even in developed societies, always force decision makers to choose among the priorities for allocation of resources. However, recent developments in health technology assessment (HTA) have created a better opportunity for allocation of limited resources available in health care systems. Although this tool has been used more frequently in developed countries, which have substantially more resources available in their health sector , there are increasing efforts in developing countries for using this tool in order to prioritize demands in their national health sector (1). The fact that HTA evaluates both short and long term impacts of medical interventions for their health outcomes and resource use could provide a clear picture for the real value of health technologies. This could obviously help with better availability and distribution of resources and improve health care system performance and equity in the society. Therefore, this function provides the opportunity to compare the value of different interventions from the society or health care providers' perspective. Pharmacoeconomics is one of the HTA sub disciplines, which solely deals with cost effectiveness evaluation of medicines and their real value for the health care system. Although many scientists believe it could provide a rational ground for decision makers, since pharmacoeco-nomic analysis identifies, measures and values costs and outcomes of the pharmaceutical interventions simultaneously , some health care professionals feel uncomfortable about putting a monetary value on the patients' medical problems and their suffering. Iran is a Middle Eastern country with a population of more than 78 million people with most being young. Iran gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, which mainly depends on the oil revenue, in 2014, was reported to be about 4200 USD. In Iran, the ministry of health and medical education (MOH) is the main stewardship of the health care system. According to the Iran constitutional law, the Iran government has the mandate to provide the highest attainable level of the health care for all Iranians. Therefore, the Iran government in the past decades has invested heavily on the national health care system and has created an opportunity for all Iranians to have fairly equitable access to the health care system. The government believes that this investment will bring valuable return to the society in the long term. As a result, the Iran health care system has advanced to a degree that its indicators have substantially improved …