Reversal of the recommendations issued by the National Commission for the Incorporation of Technologies in SUS after Public Consultations.

The work analyzed the effect of Public Consultations (PC) and their contributions to the recommendations of the National Commission for the Incorporation of Technologies (CONITEC). This is a descriptive and retrospective study with a qualitative-quantitative approach using a secondary data source of public access, between 2012 and 2017. A database was developed to characterize the PC of medications and their contributions, which allowed the identification of cases of reversals between the preliminary and final recommendation of CONITEC.

[From community pharmacies to big pharmacy chains: private provision of medicines, health system, and financialization of the Brazilian retail pharmacy market].

The provision of medicines in Brazil is marked by the predominance of private expenditures and supply in pharmacies and by the historically liberal regulation of retail drug sales. The first two decades of the 21st century witnessed the expansion and concentration of the retail pharmaceutical sector and growing financialization of the health sector. The article analyzes the characteristics of financialization of Brazilian retail pharmaceutical companies, considering the following three crosscutting dimensions: ownership structure, financial/accounting, and political.

Three decades of telemedicine in Brazil: Mapping the regulatory framework from 1990 to 2018.

This study characterized the evolution of Brazilian public telemedicine policy in the Brazilian Unified Health System for 30 years from 1988 to 2019 by analyzing its legal framework. We identified 79 telemedicine-related legislations from the federal government (laws, decrees, and ordinances) and 31 regulations of federal councils of health professionals. Three historical phases were established according to the public policy cycle, and material was classified according to the purpose of the normative documents.

Challenges and opportunities for telehealth during the COVID-19 pandemic: ideas on spaces and initiatives in the Brazilian context.

COVID-19 has created enormous challenges for health systems worldwide, with the rapidly growing number of deaths and critical patients with pneumonia requiring ventilatory support. Alternative methods to control the spread of the disease such as social isolation, extreme quarantine measures, and contact tracing have been used around the world. However, these measures may not be totally effective to fight COVID-19, in step with the necessary national preparations to meet the new patient care demands.

Hypertension and diabetes treatment affordability and government expenditures following changes in patient cost sharing in the "Farmácia popular" program in Brazil: an interrupted time series study.

Background: Increasing medicines availability and affordability is a key goal of Brazilian health policies. "Farmácia Popular" (FP) Program is one of the government's key strategies to achieve this goal. Under FP, antihypertension (HTN) and antiglycemic (DM) medicines have been provided at subsidized prices in private retail settings since 2006, and free of charge since 2011.

Correction to: Public procurement of medicines: scoping review of the scientific literature in South America.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1186/s40545-019-0195-9.].

Brazilian generics market change after Farmácia Popular program.

Objective: To evaluate trends in the use of generic and non-generic medicines to treat hypertension and diabetes under the Farmácia Popular Program (FP) and its impact on generic medicines sales volume and market share in the Brazilian pharmaceutical market.

Methods: This longitudinal, retrospective study used interrupted time series design to analyze changes in monthly sales volume and proportion of medicines sales (market share) for oral antidiabetic and antihypertensive medicines for generic versus non-generic products. Analyses were conducted in a combined dataset that aggregate monthly sales volumes from the Farmácia Popular program and from the QuintilesIMS™ (IQVIA) national market sales data from January 2007 to December 2012.

Indicator of access to medicines in relation to the multiple dimensions of access.

Creation of a single indicator of access to medicines. Data collection was performed with individuals who obtained their medication from either public and/or private pharmacies. A Likert scale was used to measure the importance and satisfaction in relation to various access dimensions.

Factors influencing pharmaceutical pricing - a scoping review of academic literature in health science.

Introduction: Pharmaceutical pricing has only recently gained space in mainstream health science literature.

Objectives: Bibliometric and content description of health science academic literature and ad hoc analysis of grey literature on factors influencing pharmaceutical pricing on databases commonly accessed by healthcare professionals.

Methods: Scoping study with no time limits performed in Medline, Scopus and Scielo, and relevant sites and databases for grey literature, using search terms with database-appropriate keywords

Results: Two hundred four articles were published in 103 peer-reviewed journals between 1981 and 2016 (last search year).

Pharmaceutical Services and comprehensiveness 30 years after the advent of Brazil's Unified Health System.

This article examines pharmaceutical services and access to essential medicines in Brazil during the 30 years since the advent of Brazil's Unified Health System from a comprehensiveness perspective. The following topics are addressed: the "realignment" of pharmaceutical services; human resources in pharmaceutical services; the essential medicines concept; the rational use of medicines; technological advances and drug manufacturing; and ethical regulation. With a strong regulatory focus and a structural framework centered on the National Medicines Policy, the past three decades represent a mixture of progress and setbacks, considering the national complexities of the healthcare system and the political, economic and social changes that have influenced policy and access to medicines, which is a key concern even in the world's richest countries, as the forums of discussion on global health have demonstrated.

Applying a health system perspective to the evolving Farmácia Popular medicines access programme in Brazil.

The Farmácia Popular Program (FPP) launched a subsidy system in Brazil, but in coexistence with the ongoing regular governmental access to medicines (Unified Health System (SUS) dispensings) mechanisms, causing overlaps in terms of financing and target population. This characteristic is quite different from most countries with medicines cost-sharing schemes. This paper aims to analyse the FPP under a health systems perspective considering the different health system levels.

National Medicines Policy in retrospective: a review of (almost) 20 years of implementation.

Pharmaceutical services and the formulation of a medicines policy are SUS areas ensured by the organic health care law 8,080/90. Thus, after a widely participative process, involving stakeholders, the National Medicines Policy (NMP) was approved in 1998 by Ordinance 3,916.The NMP presents directives and priorities, aligned with organic health care law, which should guide the federal, states and municipals entities actions to achieve the policy goals.

Incorporation of new medicines by the National Commission for Incorporation of Technologies, 2012 to June 2016.

The National Commission for incorporation of Health Technologies (CONITEC), established in 2011, advises the Ministry of Health in decisions related to the incorporation, exclusion or change of medicines, products and procedures in the Unified Health System (SUS).The study investigated the decision-making process, profile of demands and incorporation of new medicines in the SUS from January/2012 to June/2016, based on data available on the CONITEC website. All submissions were evaluated and characterized by technology and applicant type.

Farmácia Popular Program: pharmaceutical market analysis of antihypertensive acting on the renin-angiotensin system medicines.

This paper aims to analyse changes in the retail pharmaceutical market following policy changes in the Farmácia Popular Program (FP), a medicines subsidy program in Brazil. The retrospective longitudinal analyses focus on therapeutic class of agents acting on the renin-angiotensin system. Data obtained from QuintilesIMS (formerly IMS Health) included private retail pharmacy sales volume (pharmaceutical units) and sales values from 2002 to 2013.

Costs of Public Pharmaceutical Services in Rio de Janeiro Compared to Farmácia Popular Program.

Objective: To analyze the costs of public pharmaceutical services compared to Farmácia Popular Program (Popular Pharmacy Program).

Methods: Comparison between prices paid by Aqui Tem Farmácia Popular Program (Farmácia Popular is available here) with the full costs of medicine provision by the Municipal Health Department of Rio de Janeiro. The comparison comprised 25 medicines supplied by both the municipal pharmaceutical service and Aqui Tem Farmácia Popular Program.

Pharmaceutical services in Rio de Janeiro Municipality, Brazil: development regarding selected aspects from 2008 to 2014.

This article aims to analyze the development of pharmaceutical services in the context of the primary health care (PHC) in the period 2008- 2014, focusing on selection, procurement and financing of medicines. A retrospective study was undertaken, using as data sources administrative documents of Rio de Janeiro Municipality Health Secretariat (SMS-RJ) as well as secondary database. We found a growth of numbers medicines offered for PHC of 57 items in 2008 to 222 in 2014.

[The acquisition of medication to treat Alzheimer's disease in Brazil: an analysis of federal purchases, 2008-2013].

The demographic transition in Brazil has led to substantial aging of the population and an increased prevalence of age-related diseases such as dementia and Alzheimer's Disease (AD). The Brazilian Ministry of Health finances AD medication and, since 2002, a Clinical Protocol and Therapeutic Guidelines (PCDT) for this condition have been made available. This study investigated the acquisition of medication for AD in the Integrated System of Administration of General Services (SIASG) database.

"Farmácia Popular do Brasil" Program: characterization and evolution between 2004 and 2012.

The "Farmácia Popular do Brasil" Program (PFPB) aims to improve access to medicines, offering subsidized products. It is structured in an arrangement involving public and private sectors. The paper described the organization and expansion of the PFPB and examined the reference price (RP) of the medicines paid by the government, between 2004 and 2012.

Pharmaceutical policies: effects of cap and co-payment on rational use of medicines.

Background: Growing expenditures on prescription medicines represent a major challenge to many health systems. Cap and co-payment policies are intended as an incentive to deter unnecessary or marginal utilisation, and to reduce third-party payer expenditures by shifting parts of the financial burden from insurers to patients, thus increasing their financial responsibility for prescription medicines. Direct patient payment policies include caps (maximum numbers of prescriptions or medicines that are reimbursed), fixed co-payments (patients pay a fixed amount per prescription or medicine), co-insurance (patients pay a percentage of the price), ceilings (patients pay the full price or part of the cost up to a ceiling, after which medicines are free or are available at reduced cost) and tier co-payments (differential co-payments usually assigned to generic and brand medicines).

Accuracy of positron emission tomography and positron emission tomography-CT in the detection of differentiated thyroid cancer recurrence with negative (131) I whole-body scan results: A meta-analysis.

Background: The purpose of this review was to present a meta-analysis aimed to evaluate the accuracy of positron emission tomography (PET) and PET-CT for detecting recurrence of differentiated thyroid carcinoma (DTC) not identified by (131) I whole-body scintigraphy.

Methods: MEDLINE, EMBASE, LILACS, and Cochrane databases were searched for studies published between January 1985 and March 2012. Systematic methods were used to select and evaluate the quality of studies.

[Expenditures on medicines by the Rio de Janeiro Municipal Health Department, Brazil, 2002-2011].

This study analyzed time trends in the purchase of medicines by the Rio de Janeiro Municipal Health Department, Brazil, from 2002 to 2011, analyzing data on total annual amounts and unit prices. Annual expenditure per inhabitant and expenditures on medicines as a proportion of total municipal health spending were calculated. Expenditures were adjusted according to the Expanded Consumer Price Index to compare them to 2011.

[Cost analysis of18F-FDG PET-CT from the perspective of the Brazilian Unified National Health System as healthcare provider: a study in a public healthcare center in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil].

Positron emission tomography (PET) has been introduced recently in Brazil and requires costs analysis to support economic evaluation studies on its use. The current study analyzed the use of 18 F-FDG PET-CT and estimated its costs from the perspective of a public healthcare provider. The micro-costing technique was used, identifying, quantifying, and valuing all the inputs used to perform the procedure.