Healthcare budget

With an increasing proportion of society s healthcare budget spent on pharmaceuticals, even a growth in the percentage of the gross national product that governments are willing to allocate to... 

There are several reasons to focus on the Far East as part of our review of opportunities for the pharmaceutical industry abroad. In the Far East, there in concrete evidence of continuous rapid economic growth in the region the Far East is the fastest growing pharmaceutical market in the world there is an annual increase in healthcare budgets and spending in most of the Far Eastern countries and the Far East is politically and economically stable. 

Those readers who must be concerned about the next patient or next healthcare budget can close the book now. But a further reason for underlining such conclusions early in the last chapter of this book is because advanced medicine and involvement of IT also raises several deeper issues for the distant future. These questions are in particular ... 

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) (2002b) AHRQ Fiscal Year 2003 Budget in Brief, www.ahrq.gov/about/cj2003/budbrf03.htm (accessed May 24, 2002). 

In the current, price-sensitive environment, which is the hallmark of modem healthcare and certainly new drug development, expenses necessary to support clinical research are a major concern for sponsors. Both fixed and variable costs can be managed effectively compared to complete in-house development budgets. As product development costs are a significant element influencing pharmaceutical pricing, the role of innovative CROs is expected to grow. 

National expenses for medicines were about 14 percent of the total national budget for healthcare in the early 1990s. In the past this was higher for medicines. This means that the cost for medical interventions is increcising more rapidly than the cost for medicines. 

Patients have become more involved in their own healthcare decisions, and economic considerations have increased in importance. All have contributed to the movement to extend outcomes measured beyond the traditional clinical outcomes associated with pharmaceutical research. Healthcare decision makers are pressed to know more than simply the safety and efficacy parameters of an intervention. It is important for them to know how a specific intervention will impact budgets and use of other resources, and how it will impact the patient from the patient s perspective. 

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