Cost of healthcare is rising at an alarming rate around the globe. The reasons for this include a change in demographics, an increase in life expectancy due to better healthcare services, ever escalating costs of new health technologies, and an increasing demand from the general public.

As a result, the budget for healthcare has become much tighter than before. Budget holders must hence prioritize and make choices in funding new technologies. In order to be more answerable to the public, decision makers have changed in rationing priorities from a traditional empirical to the recent evidence-based approach.

Health technology assessment (HTA) new therapies or services can be used to compare costs and benefits between competitors, thus identifying the most cost-effective treatment using evidence generated in an unbiased manner. This evidence will help inform decision makers in maximizing health benefits for a given allocation of health resources.

The main objective of the presentation is to provide an overview of health economics in drug evaluation from a global perspective and to explain how it may help improve health outcomes.