4. Application of Healthcare Database to Pharmacoeconomic Research

Abstract

Pharmacoeconomic research utilizes a combination of various data such as clinical data, epidemiological data and cost data. Usually, they are obtained from several data sources that include claims and administrative data, medical records and published articles. Although the task of data extraction requires enormous time and cost, inconsistency among these data sometimes causes difficulty in interpreting study results.
Health care databases have been developed in several countries and have been used in health services research including pharmacoeconomic research. In Japan, several commercial and academic healthcare databases are now available. For example, the Japan Medical Data Center (JMDC) has developed the Medical Data Bank that standardizes disease names and classifications and uses an anonymous linkage system with an encryption code generated from a combination of hash values and stream ciphers. We describe an example of cost analysis of diabetes complications using the JMDC Medical Data Bank and demonstrate its usefulness in conducting pharmacoeconomic research in an efficient way.