Asia Behind in Health Economics

While the US and EU have been using health economics outcomes for drugs and devices for a number of years, Asia is behind in this area.  Much of this is caused by the lack of standardized systems, regulations, and resources needed to support the utilization of healthcare economics, making it difficult to use healthcare data to implement changes.  The methods used to acquire and evaluate data also significantly differ between each Asian country.  Health economics uses data generated beyond clinical trials, such as observational studies, to study the long-term effectiveness of treatments.  If the Asian countries developed more standardized approaches to evaluating healthcare, then this would provide a tremendous benefit to foreign medtech companies who have innovative drugs and devices that promote shorter hospital stays.