Introduction:

Medications are inputs that generate health expenditures and economic evaluation guides are very useful because they allow us to assess the cost and effect of medicines on people, besides health systems and society.

Objective:

To conduct a descriptive review relative to the topic of pharmacoeconomic guidelines.

Method:

Full text material was selected from the databases and Internet sites, between 1998-2018, for which keywords were used. After a critical reading of every document, summaries were made for each section in which this document was organized.

Results:

Medications are health technologies that must have economic evaluations, and pharmacoeconomic guidelines generate useful results for the decision-making process that affects the health sector. Guidelines were made more than thirty years ago; in some countries they are mandatory and in others not mandatory or only a recommendation, they have advantages and disadvantages, objectives, scope, denominates names, justifications, specific audiences and a particular process for its development that depends on a set of factors; there are evaluation agencies in some countries in the international arena. The content of a guide is general and meets the criteria of established standards, its existence contributes to the improvement of quality in different areas.

Conclusion:

The results evidence that application of a pharmacoeconomic guide is useful to medicines economic evaluation, which generates results that lead to actions that are of interest in public health.

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