Pharmacoeconomics and immunotherapy.

Pharmacoeconomics is a relatively new discipline whose scope is to describe, measure and compare costs and outcomes of alternative healthcare programmes from a variety of perspectives. This article is aimed at describing the various types of pharmacoeconomics analyses, indicating what types of costs and outcomes could be measured within each type of study, summarising the value of modelling techniques in pharmacoeconomics studies and finally suggesting what kind of pharmacoeconomic research can usefully be conducted in order to appreciate the burden of respiratory allergic disease and to evaluate the economic impact of health technologies that can effectively be used to manage it. Pharmacoeconomics is a relatively recent discipline whose use has been spread by the necessity of decision makers in most industrialised countries, to gain understanding of the economic effect of medical technologies in parallel with their clinical performance: only a wider use of the techniques of pharmacoeconomics analysis, together with an increasing willingness of the scientific community to understand the mechanics and appreciate the added value of pharmacoeconomics analysis, can help the discipline to proceed and provide further improvement to the healthcare system and to the society.