OHE has published a new report discussing a framework to help middle-income countries efficiently identify medicines for formulary inclusion. A second publication applies this framework to the Mexican decision making system as a case study.

A number of middle-income countries (MICs) are evolving their health systems toward universal health coverage for patient populations. PhRMA commissioned OHE Consulting to explore options and recommend methods that could help MICs efficiently and effectively identify medicines for formulary inclusion.

The first report presents a framework for developing medicines formularies which combines macro-level decision making factors (focusing on the health system organisation and its priority setting), and micro-level factors (looking at intervention-specific effects) to determine the overall value of medicines.

The decision-making process is broken down into four stages:

• nomination and prioritisation;
• assessment of selected interventions;
• appraisal of selected interventions;
• financial assessment.

In the second publication we apply this framework to analyse the Mexican decision making process for the inclusion of a new health treatment in the positive list. We propose a series of recommendations that could improve the efficiency of the Mexican decision making process.

Download the full reports here:

• Policy Options for Formulary Development in Middle-income Countries
• Policy Options for Formulary Development in Middle-income Countries: Mexico Case Study

A related publication is:

Towse, A., Devlin, N., Hawe, E. & Garrison, L., 2011. The Evolution of HTA in Emerging Markets Health Care Systems: Analysis to Support a Policy Response, London: Office of Health Economics.

For more information please contact Karla Hernandez – Villafuerte at OHE.