Linking pharmacoeconomic analyses to results of systematic review and meta-analysis.

Pharmacoeconomic analysis applies quantitative modeling to the assessment of the clinical and economic impact of new drugs. Users of pharmacoeconomic analysis include government agencies, government payers and policy makers, private payers (including managed care organizations) and pharmaceutical companies. Pharmacoeconomic analyses can aid policy decisions, provide support for better allocation of scarce resources and assist clinical decisions. Since pharmacoeconomic analyses can have a wide impact, it is important that they are based upon reliable data. Well-conducted systematic reviews and meta-analyses can provide high quality data to pharmacoeconomic analyses, with considerable synergy achieved by combining these two powerful methodologies. An overview of systematic review and meta-analysis are presented and some examples of their use in pharmacoeconomics are described.