Applying Pharmacoeconomics in Community and Hospital Pharmacy Research

Increasing pressure on maximising the output from limited resources has forced health-care policy makers to use health economic evaluation tools to evaluate the efficacy and efficiency of pharmacy services. Increasingly to evaluate these services, pharmacoeconomic evaluation is being used. This chapter introduces the concept of pharmacoeconomics and discusses different pharmacoeconomic methodologies. It also traverses literature covering economic evaluation studies in community and hospital pharmacy setting. The chapter discusses conducting economic evaluations and debates issues related to data sources, perspectives, costs, outcomes measures, sensitivity analysis and strengths, weaknesses and opportunities related to this research.