Pharmacogenetics and cost-effectiveness analysis: a two-way street

“Tailoring medicines to patients is a key challenge for the $750 billion global pharmaceutical market.”— Rt Hon David Willetts (Minister of State for Universities and Science) launching the Stratified Medicines Innovation Platform, a new £50m UK government initiative aGenetic and proteomic information can be used to identify those patient groups who are most susceptible to a disease and those who are most likely to respond to particular pharmacological treatments. In this review we discuss the impact of cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) regarding the way pharmacogenetics are adopted by healthcare systems and also, the potential impact of pharmacogenetics on the way CEA is conducted. We conclude that, although CEA can help incentivise the development of appropriate pharmacogenetic tests, when used inappropriately by payers or when ignored by developers, it can act as an obstacle to the adoption of health and efficiency improving technologies.