Barriers and Facilitators of Pharmacoeconomic Studies: A Review of Evidence from the Middle Eastern Countries.

ABSTRACT

The world is facing a continuous increase in medical costs. Due to the surge in disease prevalence, medical science is becoming more sensitive to the economic impact of medications and drug therapies. This brings about the importance of pharmacoeconomics, which is concerned with the effective use of health resources to optimize the efficiency and costs of medications of treatment for the best outcomes. This review was conducted to find out the potential barriers and facilitators to implementing pharmacoeconomic studies in the Middle Eastern region having both high- and low-income countries. The varying economies in the region depict diverse healthcare systems where implementation of pharmacoeconomics faces a large number of challenges and is also aided by numerous facilitators that contribute to the growth of its implementation. In this context, we have reviewed the status of pharmacoeconomics in Middle Eastern countries in research databases (Google Scholar, MEDLINE, Science Direct and Scopus) using keywords ("pharmacoeconomics", "barriers", "facilitators", "Middle East"). The study reported that Yemen, Syria, Palestine, Iran, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon are the lowest-income countries in the Middle East and the implementation of pharmacoeconomics is the poorest in these states. The UAE, Saudi Arabia and Israel are high-income rich states where economic aspects were comparatively better but still a large number of barriers hinder the way to its effective implementation. These include the absence of national governing bodies, the lack of data on the effectiveness of medications, the absence of sufficient pharmacoeconomic experts and the lack of awareness of the importance of pharmacoeconomics. The main facilitators were the availability of pharmacoeconomic guidelines, the encouragement of pharmacoeconomic experts and the promotion of group discussions and collaborations between researchers and policymakers. Cost-benefit analysis is still evolving in Middle Eastern countries, and there is a great need for improvement so that states can effectively benefit from cost analysis tools and utilize their health resources. In this regard, governments should develop national governing bodies to evaluate, implement pharmacoeconomics at the local and state levels and bring about innovation in the field through further research and development incorporating all sectors of pharmacy and pharmaceutics. The data presented in this research can further be extended in future studies to cover the various domains of pharmacoeconomics including cost-minimization analysis, cost-effectiveness analysis and cost-benefit analysis and their applications within the healthcare sectors of Middle Eastern countries.