Book Report: Health Economics and Pharmacoeconomics for the Students of Medical Sciences; ISBN 978-86-7760-082-2

I have been honored by privilege of presenting a recent university textbook written in Serbian language entitled: " Health Economics and Pharmacoeconomics for the Students of Medical Sciences, " Edited by Prof. Mihajlo (Michael) Jakovljevic MD, PhD (1). This book was authored by 38 leading experts in their respective fields, based in SouthEastern Europe. Participation of governmental, academic, and industrial sector among the authors of chapters helped to provide overview of major health economics issues from various aspects. This book is an ambitious pioneer project in creating university textbook for postgraduate students in this field in native Balkan languages. Hereby, I will provide a short description of major topics covered by the Book content. This textbook has at first been intended for use by undergraduate students of medicine, pharmacy, and dentistry to cover an existing knowledge gap in applied health sciences. However, it turned out to be of an immense practical use also for postgraduate master and PhD students of interdiscipli-nary health sciences due to comprehensive interdisciplinary reach. Due to its lingual limitations, this textbook is of use only in areas of mostly mutually understandable Western Balkan languages: Serbian, Slovenian, Croatian, Bosnian, and Macedonian. This textbook should be considered as highly recommendable for studying and research by students of most private-owned and state-owned universities and other higher education establishments throughout former Yugoslavia region. The Book consists of 68 chapters (631 pages) organized in five consecutive sections. General Part presents introduction to the concepts and definition of health-care economics. Its historical development and terminology of the discipline is presented in further exposé. The second, Special Part exposes the issues of cost-of-illness studies as seen by various leading clinical medicine experts familiar with the respective fields. Several chapters consider health-care budget impact of some of the most costly medical interventions. Consecutive Pharmacoeconomics Part is presented in the form of detailed and elaborated discussion about different methodological approaches ranging from cost-effectiveness assessments to resource allocation analysis. Conclusive Remarks describe and elaborate the emerging markets and provide quite realistic picture of the expected developments among the Global and Eastern European/SEE health-care markets. Fifth part is formed as the Book of Terms, Index, and comprehensive English/Serbian vocabulary of essential standardized and broadly used international terms in disciplines of health economics and health policy. This segment of the project should be of immense value for regional health economists and policy makers understanding these topics and dealing …