Pharmacoeconomic evaluation for Chinese medicine products: Progress, challenges, and suggestions

Pharmacoeconomic evaluation is essential for integrating Chinese medicine products into health systems. Despite notable progress in research output and quality over the past decade, methodological challenges remain, such as a lack of high-quality clinical evidence, outcome measures specific to Chinese medicine products, inappropriate study duration choices, scientific justification for selecting comparators, accurate calculation of costs and benefits, and tailored evaluation methods for Chinese medicine products. We suggest incorporating economic evaluations within randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of innovative products and conducting cost-effectiveness analyses of established therapies using real-world data (RWD). These strategies will help develop evidence-based frameworks specific to Chinese medicine products and strengthen the global foundation of pharmacoeconomics for herbal medicines, promoting their integration into health systems and clinical practice.