Question

write about the History of Pharmacoeconomic Guideline Development in Canada

Answer 1

Ans: In 1994 Canada becamethe second country after Australia to release national guidelines for theeconomic evaluation of pharmaceuticals. The guidelines were developed after consultation with the wide variety of stakeholders over the rigorous period of 18 months. Pharamaeconomics concerns the application of the methods of economic evaluation of health care programs to interventions involving pharmaceutical products. In Canada the process of developing these guidelines began when the Province of Ontario issued draft guidelines for comment in fall of 1991. during 1992 it was find that it would be useful to develop a set of Canadian guidelines that each province could adopt with or without modifications, as they saw fit. This led to Canadian Collaborative Workshop on Pharmaeconomics, held at Le Chantecler, Quebec June 21-22, 1993 attended by 73 representing the major Canadian stakeholders plus some international experts. The proceedings of the workshop were published in November 1993.Under the direction of George Torrance, McMaster University produced four drafts of these guidelines. Due to emerging science of health economics and its increasing importance in health care resource allocation these guidelines are very important to provide a forum for stakeholder inputs.

In total 22 guidelines were submitted by the committee and they can be modified by the province according to its own needs.