RESUMO
Medical economic burden, also known as economic burden caused by disease, is defined as the actual or potential resources consumed for health needs. Research on the medical economic burden in China starts late and has a weak foundation compared with European and American countries, but it has developed rapidly in recent years. At present, there is no uniform standard on the academic definition, content and classification of medical economic burden. Moreover, most researchers in China mainly focus on the economic burden of single disease, with abundant contents but limited and traditional methods, and the researches on the factors influencing the medical economic burden and the medical economic burden caused by medical insurance and health investment are rare. In this paper, we proposed that the future research directions of medical economic burden may include the following aspects: (1) empirical and exploratory studies on the influencing factors of medical and health service costs; (2) to introduce catastrophic medical indexes, explore innovative measurement methods for medical economic burden, and compare the differences between different measurement methods; and (3) exploratory research on medical economic burden through interdisciplinary perspectives.