[Economic assessment on medications: effects on pharmaceutical industry and health administration]

The present article discuss briefly the different methods of economic assessment of drugs, how and where the methods can be included alongside clinical trials, and discuss their influence in the pharmaceutical industry and health care administration. There are several methodological limitations when adding the economic assessment into a clinical trial principally because they differs in the aims. Economic assessment is interested in efficiency and clinical trials in security and efficacy. Pharmaceutical industry have been developing pharmacoeconomic departments in order to increase the internal efficiency of the viability of new products and to generate studies for regulatory authorities. At the moment, for regulatory purposes in Spain, an economic assessment is nor required but is recommended. The standardization of the methodology of the economic assessment is a key issue that may produce the spread and adoption in health care decision making process.