• Korean Journal of Clinical Pharmacy
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.278-287
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• 2010

The main objective of this study is to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of tafluprost compared with latanoprost in primry open Angle Glaucoma (POAG) or ocular hypertension OH patients in Korea. A decision analytic model was developed from a societal perspective to estimate clinical outcome, drug cost and glaucoma related cost. The model assumes branch like following: successful treatment, switching to other drug, adding other drug, laser or surgery. Treatment success rate is defined as the percentage of patients with elevated IOP achieving <20% reduction, and discontinuation rate is the percentage of patients who were withdrawn due to severe adverse events. A model that is comprised of 1 month cycle length has 1 year. Treatment success rate and discontinuation rate were obtained from published literatures searched in database. Resource utilizations and costs were calculated with national health insurance data and clinical expert opinions. Sensitivity analyses were performed on crucial parameters. Tafluprost is less costly than latanoprost, $609.0 vs $651.2 expected cost. Thus tafluprost was shown to be dominant compared with latanoprost. The results of sensitivity analysis revealed stable across most of the included parameters. According to this study, tafluprost shows more clinical outcome for 1 year than latanoprost. In addition, first-line treatment of tafluprost is a more cost-minimizing strategy associated with POAG or OH compared with latanoprost.

• YAKHAK HOEJI
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• v.52 no.2
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• pp.160-164
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• 2008

This study investigated the current status and drug expenditure of the drug shortage prevention program in Korea. National health insurance claims data from 2001 to 2005 were analyzed for the drugs with inadequate supply, which were designated as shortage prevention drugs (SPDs). Drug use of SPDs have increased every year, but the average increase rate of drug expenditure for SPDs, 13.5% was lower than that for all the reimbursed drugs, 18.6%. Drugs with price increase based on production cost were more actively used than drugs with prescription incentives for doctors.

• Journal of Preventive Medicine and Public Health
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.484-494
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• 2000

Objective : To evaluate the relative benefits and the costs associated with the introduction of the new pharmaceutical provision called 'Mandatory Prescription System' which separates the role of physicians from that of pharmacists with respect to the prescription and dispensation of from the perspective of consumers (i.e., patients). Methods : The costs of the system were measured by considering both direct and indirect costs. Direct costs included additional payments for ambulatory care and dispensing fees that occurred under the new system. indirect costs consisted of transportation expenses and costs related to time spent for physician consultation, waiting for the prescriptions to be filled, and extra traveling. Benefits identified in this study were the reduction of drug misuse and overuse, and the overall decrease in drug consumption among the Korean population. Sensitivity analysis was peformed for the inclusion of benefits for outpatients of hospitals, price elasticity, and increased fees for established patients. Results : The net benefit was estimated to be about minus 1,862 billion won and the benefit-cost ratio was 0.478. This indicates that the costs of 'Mandatory Prescription' outweigh its benefits, relative to the previous system. The sensitivity analysis results for all the variables considered in this study consistently showed the benefit-cost ratio to be less than 1. Conclusion : The results of this study suggest that implementing Mandatory Prescription System in Korea might be inefficient from the consumer's perspective. The results of this study do not coincide with the results of previous studies, presumably because of the differences in study design and in which items of costs and benefits were considered.

• Korean Journal of Biological Psychiatry
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.56-65
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• 1998

Clinicians can use therapeutic drug monitoring(TDM) to optimise dosage decisions with psychotropic drugs, in order to maximize efficacy and prevent toxicity, especially when individuals are nonresponsive to treatment or vulnerable to adverse reactions with standard doses because age, disease states or drug interactions. Currently, therapeutic drug concentrations have been established for the TCA and lithium. There is also evidence for the usefulness of TDM with carbamazepine, valproic acid and some antipsychotic drugs. However for most psychotropic drugs this approach remains experimental. TDM-assisted psychiatric treatment is potentially useful and cost effective, particularly when applied by psychiatrists who are knowledgeable of pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics.

• Journal of Institute of Convergence Technology
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.48-51
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• 2011

Transdermal drug delivery device is a method of drug delivery through the skin. Skin has a very large area, so it is attractive route to drug delivery. When drug delivery through the skin, microneedle has a advantage that painless, constant drug deliver and penetration efficient; nevertheless the cost is expensive because fabrication process need a particular equipment and not suitable in mass production. This study shows microneedle fabrication process using convergence of general MEMS process and dicing process that can make 3-D sharp microneedle tip and this fabrication process suitable for mass production.

• Korean Journal of Biological Psychiatry
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.1-6
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• 2021

Pharmacogenetics is opening a new era of precision medicine in psychiatry. Drug-metabolizing enzymes are characterized by genetic polymorphisms, which render a large portion of variability in individual drug metabolism. Dose adjustment based on pharmacogenetics knowledge is a first step to translate pharmacogenetics into clinical practice. However, diverse factors including cost-effectiveness should be addressed to provide clinical recommendation. To address current challenges in pharmacogenetics testing in psychiatry, this review provides an update regarding genotyping (SNP analysis, array, and next-generation sequencing), genotype-phenotype correlations, and cost-effectiveness. The current updates on pharmacogenetics in psychiatry will provide guidance for both clinician and researchers to have a consensus in harmonizing efforts to advance the pharmacogenetics field in a part of precision medicine in psychiatry.

• Korean Journal of Clinical Pharmacy
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.215-225
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• 2022

Background: Patients with hematologic cancers have a risk of drug-related problems (DRPs) from medications associated with chemotherapy and supportive care. Although the role of oncology pharmacists has been widely documented in the literature, few studies have reported its impact on cost reduction. This study aimed to describe the activities of oncology pharmacists with respect to hematologic diseases and evaluate the associated cost avoidance. Methods: From January to July 2021, patients admitted to the department of hemato-oncology at Seoul National University, Bundang Hospital were studied. The activities of oncology pharmacists were reported by DRP type following the Pharmaceutical Care Network version 9.1 guidelines, and the acceptance rate was calculated. The avoided cost was estimated based on the cost of the pharmacy intervention, pharmacist manpower, and prescriptions associated with the intervention. Results: Pharmacists intervened in 584 prescriptions from 208 patients during the study period. The most prevalent DRP was "adverse drug event (possibly) occurring" (32.4%), followed by "effect of drug treatment not optimal" (28.6%). "Drug selection" (42.5%) and "dose selection" (30.3%) were the most common causes of DRPs. The acceptance rate of the interventions was 97.1%. The total avoidance cost was KRW 149,468,321; the net profit of the avoidance cost, excluding labor costs, was KRW 121,051,690; and the estimated cost saving was KRW 37,223,748. Conclusion: Oncology pharmacists identified and resolved various types of DRPs from prescriptions for patients with hematologic disease, by reviewing the prescriptions. Their clinical service contributed to enhanced patient safety and the avoidance of associated costs.

• Health Policy and Management
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.65-86
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• 1999

In this study, we investigate the welfare effect of mandatory prescription(MP) in Korea. An immediate effect of MP is the increase in the implicit price of prescribed medicine, which could be obtained easily from drug stores before MP. This will lower the quantity demanded. which will in turn reduce the abuse of drugs. The key to the cost-benefit analysis of MP, therefore, should be focused on this point; price increase in the cost side and quantity decrease in the benefit side. Since we do not have as much information as needed for the analysis, however, we made strong assumptions for the clarity of numbers; the severity of moral hazard of medical doctors related to the sales of hospital drugs, constant demand elasticity, constant benefit multiplier of reduced drug usage, and so on, With these rather strong assumptions, we find that i) the benefit side is much more sensitive to demand elasticity than the cost side effect ii) the larger the demand elasticity, the greater the size of net gain of MP, though the result depends on the size of the benefit multiplier. This analysis shows that we need to have more information on the specific institutional path of health benefit diffusion caused by the reduction of drug usage, which was the major target of MP.

• Proceedings of the Korean Information Science Society Conference
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• 2007.10b
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• pp.17-21
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• 2007

Drug discovery is a long process with a low rate of successful new therapeutic discovery regardless of the advances in information technologies. Identification of candidate proteins is an essential step for the drug discovery and it usually requires considerable time and efforts in the drug discovery. The drug discovery is not a logical, but a fortuitous process. Nevertheless, considerable amount of information on drugs are accumulated in UniProt, NCBI, or DrugBank. As a result, it has become possible to try to devise new computational methods classifying drug target candidates extracting the common features of known drug target proteins. In this paper, we devise a method for drug target protein classification by using weighted feature summation and Support Vector Machine. According to our evaluation, the method is revealed to show moderate accuracy $85{\sim}90%$. This indicates that if the devised method is used appropriately, it can contribute in reducing the time and cost of the drug discovery process, particularly in identifying new drug target proteins.

• YAKHAK HOEJI
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• v.59 no.3
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• pp.98-106
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• 2015

Analytical method for related substances can be categorized into two methods depending on the necessity of reference standard (RS). The analytical method of related substances with RS is fast and accurate, but it's very expensive and technically difficult to synthesize RS due to their complicated structure. Another method is using relative retention time (RRT) and relative response factor (RRF) which are already validated with RS. Validation of this method is not easy and time consuming, but once it has been developed, it can save cost and time. In this study, we developed the analytical method for related substances of fenofibrate using RRT and RRF. We validated the method by evaluating specificity, linearity, accuracy and precision according to the "Manual for Guideline Application for Validation of Analytical Procedures" of MFDS. Also, we calculated RRT and RRF between fenofibrate and fenofibrate related substances. The results of this study showed high specificity for fenofibrate and fenofibrate related substances. Correlation coefficient(r) of all substances were more than 0.99, and the recovery of fenofibrate, fenofibrate related substance I, II and III were 99.44%, 100.84%, 99.14% and 101.58%, respectively. Precision of fenofibrate and its related substances were ranged between RSD 0.29% and 0.93%. Quantification limits of fenofibrate, fenofibrate related substance I, II and III were determined to be $0.03{\mu}g/ml$, $0.05{\mu}g/ml$, $0.04{\mu}g/ml$ and $0.02{\mu}g/ml$, respectively by confirming signal to noise ratio of each chromatogram. The RRT for fenofibrate related substance I, II and III were determined to be 0.35, 0.41 and 1.34, respectively. Also, the RRF for fenofibrate related substance I, II and III were determined to be 1.28, 0.98 and 0.79, respectively. The developed method was applied to determine contents for fenofibrate related substances in commercial fenofibrate (active pharmaceutical ingredient). As a result, developed analytical methods of related substances will be used for revising the monograph of fenofibrate in Korean Pharmacopoeia revision and contribute quality control of drugs by improving cost and time consuming problem of RS.