Vaccination planning and vaccine prices in a decentralizing country - Italy.

This paper gives an overview, in the era of regionalization, of vaccination planning and vaccine price management in the Italian National Health Service. In particular, we analyse the current National Vaccination Plan (NVP) and end with two "case studies" of the latest entries in the Italian vaccination calendar, comparing HPV and PCV vaccines, the most expensive ones in Italy at present. The present NVP put an end to the long period without official documents for vaccination planning, mainly reflecting the controversial relationships between the national and regional tiers.

Regional tenders on biosimilars in Italy: an empirical analysis of awarded prices.

Objective: The goal of the present study is to assess the awarded prices and thus the real level of competition the regional tenders referring to biosimilars in Italy achieved.

Methods: We conducted a web-based analysis to collect detailed information on regional biosimilar tenders, up to December 2012. We identified 191 lots referring to the three off-patent biologicals (somatropin, epoetin and filgrastim) mentioned in the 24 tenders that took place during the study period (2008-2012).

Cost effectiveness of the new pneumococcal vaccines: a systematic review of European studies.

Introduction: Diseases caused by Streptococcus pneumoniae (pneumococcus) are a major global public health problem. Despite their importance, information on the burden of the different pneumococcal diseases is limited and estimates vary widely.

Objective And Methods: We critically reviewed the full economic evaluations (FEEs) on the new pneumococcal conjugate vaccines (PCVs) conducted in the European Union (EU) to assess their potential contribution to public decision making.

A critical systematic review of budget impact analyses on drugs in the EU countries.

Background: Budget impact analysis (BIA) is a relatively recent technique that is supposed to be complementary to more established economic evaluations (EEs).

Objective: We reviewed the BIAs published on drugs in the EU since December 2008, to assess whether these studies have improved in quality in the last few years.

Methods: We conducted a literature search on the international databases PubMed and EMBASE.