Pharmacoeconomics; an Appropriate Tool for Policy Makers or Just a New Field of Research in Iran?

Pharmacoeconomics is defined as the science of identifying and comparing costs and the consequences of drug therapy in health care programs. As a sub-discipline of health economics, pharmacoeconomics, is fairly a new research discipline in the world which has come about mainly in response to economic pressures on health systems. The root of this pressure lies in the mismatch of enhanced demand for health care and pharmaceutical services on one hand, and limitations on available resources on the other. Iranian health system has also faced difficulties in managing its limited resources and containment of the health and pharmaceutical expenses. Pharmaceutical expenditures in Iran have increased from 353 Million US $ in 2001 to 2.45 Billion US $ in 2009. This is while the whole number of pharmaceutical sales has increased just from 18.6 Billion to 28.5 Billion during the same period. The figures show that the growth rate of the pharmaceutical expenditures is nearly 11 times greater than the growth rate in the number of pharmaceutical sales. It has been suggested that innovation and advances in new and high cost pharmaceuticals, appearance of new diseases, and enhancing patients' expectations are of the main causes of a sharp increase in pharmaceutical expenditures worldwide. But, in addition to these common causes accounting for the quick increase in health and pharmaceutical expenditures worldwide, there are some specific reasons for Iran which could explain why this trend has happened to the Iranian pharmaceutical expenditures so sharply. Introduction of market-oriented reform (even though imperfectly), including privatization of the state-owned pharmaceutical manufactures, reduction of medicine subsidies, and allowing easier access to foreign markets could be considered as important elements, which have affected the total pharmaceutical expenditures considerably. For whatever reason, which is important enough to be discussed in more details elsewhere, it is obvious that the health system is faced with the challenge of a sharp increase in pharmaceutical expenditures. As one of the consequences of this increase, health insurance organizations have reduced their pharmaceutical coverage significantly. The result of this problem has appeared in patient out of pocket spending for pharmaceuticals, which is increased to around 65 percent. This could be an important warning sign, which clearly shows that the health insurance organizations are not able to manage the trend of pharmaceutical expenditures in the country. It is reasonable that there will never be sufficient resources to achieve all ideal objectives in health care, even …