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The future of economics. Hacker attack on health data.  Where is air pollution highest in low- and middle-income countries. 5.8m children have long COVID Underrated: the HPV vaccine.

What are the 4 pillars of medical ethics?

The 4 pillars of medical ethics are: Beneficence means that practitioners should act as they believe is in the best interest of the patient. Unlike non-maleficence, it goes beyond simply doing no harm and encourages to actively help others. Beneficence is important because it ensures that healthcare professionals consider individual circumstances and remember that what…

PREFER recommendations for patient preference studies

Patient preferences should be the most important part of health care decisionmaking. However, third parties often make decisions for patients. Physicians make decisions for patients due to asymmetric information (i.e., physicians are experts; patients typically are not). Payers make decisions for patients since–in most developed countries–third-party payment cover most of the cost. Moreover, in some…

A primer on formularies

Hydery and Reddy (2024) provide a nice primer on drug formularies. Below is a quick overview. What is a formulary? A formulary is a continually updated list of medications, products, and technologies supported by current evidence-based medicine, as well as the judgment of physicians, pharmacists, and other relevant experts in the diagnosis and treatment of disease…

Thursday Links

How NICE has applied it’s disease severity modifier. Non-profit hospitals and bond ratings. Calculating cell & gene therapy breakeven point using RWD. Public vs. private Medicaid. Supplementing VA with private insurance.

Are providers ready for biosimilars?

Perhaps more education is needed. That is the conclusion from a paper by Giovatto et al. (2024). The authors conducted an online survey of US prescribers and health system specialty pharmacists practicing in the rheumatology, dermatology, and gastroenterology. Among the 31 prescribers and 44 pharmacists who responded to the survey: Only 16.0% of prescribers and…

SHEER: Good practices for incorporating family and caregiver spillovers into health economic evaluations

Illnesses impact not only the patients, but oftentimes impact caregivers and family members as well. However, most economic analyses do not incorporate a diseases’ spillover impacts on caregivers. …a recent review of NICE evaluations revealed that only 3% of technology appraisals included caregiver health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in cost-utility analyses (CUAs). Similarly, Lamsal [2022]…