The role of pharmacoeconomic evaluations in disease management

Disease management is a systematic approach to a health condition or a healthcare intervention that organises preventative, interventional and care approaches throughout the continuum of care and which measures outcomes in terms of populations, not individuals. Disease management's advantage over the current component system is that it stresses prevention over acute treatment of a chronic disease. Patients with better control of their chronic diseases will likely have a decrease in the use of emergency room and inpatient hospitalisation services, thereby improving clinical outcomes of patients. To achieve these goals, disease management uses pharmacoeconomic evaluations and outcomes measures to provide information that helps build formularies and clinical practice guidelines. Several problems exist in integrating pharmacoeconomic studies in disease management models, such as the need for more integrated information systems, standardisation and who should perform these evaluations. Some possible solutions will be addressed in this article. With greater emphasis being placed on controlling costs, the need for pharmacoeconomic evaluations in the design of disease management models will continue to increase in the future.