PHIS – hospital medicines
The PHIS network was established in the framework of the Pharmaceutical Health Information System (PHIS) project that was funded by the Executive Agency for Health and Consumers of the European Commission and the Austrian Federal Ministry of Health.
This PHIS project that ran from 2008 till 2011 was a ‘sister project’, or follow-up to the PPRI project that, as European Commission co-funded research project, had already come to an end at that time. A major learning of the PPRI project was that little was known on pharmaceutical pricing and reimbursement policies in the in-patient sector and on prices of medicines procured for hospitals. Thus, one major research area of the PHIS project was on hospital medicines.
The PHIS network included members of the PPRI network (i.e. representatives of national pharmaceutical pricing and reimbursement authorities) plus hospital pharmacists and hospital managers.
Activities and deliverables of the PHIS network / project:
- Extension of the glossary of pharmaceutical terms, by inclusion of hospital-related terms
- PHIS Hospital Reports on national pharmaceutical pricing, procurement and funding systems for medicines used in hospitals, written by PHIS network members
- A taxonomy of PHIS indicators related to meta-indicators to describe in-patient and out-patient pharmaceutical systems, used for building a database
- PHIS Hospital Pharma Report, providing a comparative analysis of pharmaceutical pricing and reimbursement policies for medicines used in hospitals in the 36 PHIS member countries (EU Member States and a few further, mainly European countries
- PHIS Hospital Pharma Seminar, Bratislava, 26 February 2010, to disseminate the findings of the project
- Further publication on hospital medicines prices, such as
- Vogler S, Zimmermann N, Leopold C, Habl C, Mazag J (2013): Discounts and Rebates Granted for Medicines for Hospital Use in Five European Countries. Open Pharmacoeconomics & Health Economics Journal 5: 1-10
- Vogler S, Zimmermann N, Habl C, Mazag J (2013): The role of discounts and loss leaders in medicine procurement in Austrian hospitals - a primary survey of official and actual medicine prices. Cost Effectiveness and Resource Allocation 11: 15
- See https://ppri.goeg.at/publications
After the completion of the PHIS project, the PHIS network was incorporated in the PPRI network.
PPRI Medical Devices
There is strong interlinkage between medicines and medical devices (e.g. personalised medicines). However, the degree of regulation is lower for medical devices compared to medicines. At request of PPRI network members, a sub-group on medical devices (PPRI Medical Devices/MD) was established. The aim of PPRI MD is to exchange information on pricing and reimbursement policies of medical devices and thus increase transparency in the field. Experts in the field are connected, and collaboration with similar initiatives is sought in order to provide added value and to avoid redundancy.
Eligible institutions to join the PPRI MD network are public authorities dealing with medical devices. Depending on the organisation in a country, competences for medical devices might be with the same institution as for medicines. The PPRI Secretariat is also in charge of coordinating the PPRI MD network.
PPRI tools will be adapted for the PPRI MD network.
The first meeting of the PPRI MD network took place in Ljubljana (Slovenia) on 14 November 2018.
Further thematic PPRI networks
The PPRI ‘tool box’ can also be adapted to further networks, and further thematic PPRI networks can be established in case of interest, see also https://ppri.goeg.at/supporting_networks.