PRACTICAL ISSUES IN CONDUCTING PHARMACOECONOMIC STUDIES

Many difficulties are inherent to pharmacoeconomic studies. Because th ese studies are observational, there are many factors that cannot be c ontrolled; for example, there are many variations across the country i n the practice of any particular therapy. Therefore, designing a case report form that will match the source documents from various investig ator sites is not easy. Issues arise in every activity such as choice of investigator site, data collection, data analysis, and interpretati on of the results. These issues will be discussed, and an example of a pharmacoeconomic study conducted to evaluate the cost-effectiveness o f patch testing in patients diagnosed with. allergic contact dermatiti s will be presented.