Published: OHE Study Projecting UK Medicines Expenditure

This research varies from other analyses in using a product-level, rather than a macro, approach.

PharmacoEconomics has just published OHE’s study projecting medicines expenditure in the UK to 2015. ( The methodology for this research varies from earlier approaches in using a product-level, or “bottom-up”, approach, rather than a top-down, macro perspective.

PharmacoEconomics has just published OHE’s study projecting medicines expenditure in the UK to 2015. (See our earlier post.) The methodology for this research varies from earlier approaches in using a product-level, or “bottom-up”, approach, rather than a top-down, macro perspective. This makes it possible to base forecasts on what is most likely to change in the medicines market, e.g. the appearance of new products and the debut of new generics and biosimilars.

In a comparison of results, the bottom-up approach was shown to provide richer detail about causes and distribution of costs, i.e. which therapeutic areas may consume the greater resources. This may allow policy makers to make better-informed decisions—both about allocating resources and about policies influencing medicines expenditure.

O’Neill, P., Mestre-Ferrandiz, J., Puig-Peiro, R. and Sussex, J. (2013) Projecting expenditure on medicines in the UK NHS. PharmcoEconomics. Online First article. doi 10.1007/s40273-013-0082-1.

This publication is a refinement of an OHE Research Paper available on this website. O’Neill, P., Mestre-Ferrandiz, J., Puig-Peiro, R. and Sussex, J. (2013) Projecting expenditure on medicines in the NHS. Research Paper 13/02. London: Office of Health Economics.