4 Moreover, the greater use of generics need not negatively impact quality and in some cases may improve it. For example, prescribing in accordance with established guidelines for the treatment of hypertension could lead to more generic drug use and substantial prescription drug cost savings (approximately 25% of total drug costs for hypertension medications) while providing higher-quality, evi...

Intr oduction With a few exceptions, e.g. Ireland and the UK, generic drug use has been promoted in western countries by allowing pharmacists to substitute drugs defined as therapeutically equivalent generics. Although this enables cost savings, which can slow growing pharmaceutical budgets, concerns have been raised regarding the possibility of such substitution leading to a higher overall hea...

• Innovator drugs are given their own brand name and a common generic name that is shared with products certified as bioequivalent by a regulatory authority. • Characteristics—including names—that uniquely identify a seller’s product are entitled to legal protection against misappropriation. • Well-controlled studies and decades of use reveal that generic drugs approved by the Food and Drug Adm...

To address the debate on the safety of generic substitution quantitatively, the author compared the change in AUC in virtual patients who were simulated for several different scenarios of generic substitution. In four scenarios of original (branded) to generic and generic to generic substitution, 5,000 virtual patients were simulated per scenario using the programming software R. The mean popul...

OBJECTIVE To assess the magnitude of price difference between generic and innovator medicines and to evaluate the effect of the price competition between them. METHODS From January 2000 to June 2004, 135 generic medicines and their respective innovator medicines were followed up for a period of up to four years. Prices were extracted from pharmaceutical market specific publications and record...