[Establishing an insight-gaining area in pharmacoeconomics].
BACKGROUND
The use of economic evaluation methods is very important in health care, in order to select those medicines that could be funded by National Health Services, or that could be included in the hospital or primary health care formularies. The development of the Clearinghouse on Pharmacoeconomics, available for health care professionals, represents an important advance for the information-knowledge system which is basic for professionals to understand how important it is to incorporate efficiency into decision making. Both primary health care and hospitals, need to assure the quality of pharmacoeconomic information that must be taken into account when evaluating the use of new or in use drugs.


OBJECTIVE
To establish a Clearinghouse on Pharmacoeconomics with the most important resources on this subject available in Internet from the countries of the European Union, United States and Canada.


METHODS
Descriptive study of web sites of institutions and centers and other pharmacoeconomics and health economics resources from 24 OECD countries mainly from the European Union, United States and Canada.


RESULTS
The Clearinghouse of Pharmacoeconomics has identified information from 55 centers of pharmacoeconomics and health economics, 20 journals, 32 books, 19 data bases of medicines, 14 periodic bulletins of pharmacoeconomics subjects, and 16 professional associations. It also includes articles, two-monthly bulletins and health news which can all be found in a web site under the denomination of Clearinghouse on Pharmacoeconomics. The number of visits has been of 8,488 since June 30th of the year 2000.


CONCLUSIONS
A Clearinghouse on Pharmacoeconomics that includes the most important resources from the countries in the European Union, the United States and Canada related to pharmacoeconomics and health economics has been established. The number of visits from June 2000 to May 2003 was 8,488. To establish, increase and maintain the number of users who visit and obtain data from the clearinghouse on pharmacoeconomics, the use of an alert system every fifteen days has proved effective.
Domínguez Castro
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Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Escuela Nacional de Sanidad, Madrid. adominguez@isciii.es
Iñesta García
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D017850:Economics, Pharmaceutical / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006801:Humans; D019451:Information Management / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D020407:Internet / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D008490:Medical Informatics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*