Pharmaceutical Policy Research Group

Our objectives and research priorities

Our aim is to inform and influence pharmaceutical policy reforms through research, and to study the achievement of reforms’ objectives and expectations from perspectives central to them. We support the reform of pharmaceutical matters with research evidence

Our research priorities and key themes are:

1. Pharmaceutical policy and rational pharmacotherapy

• Generic substitution and reference pricing, including substitution of biological medicines at community pharmacies
• Pharmacy services, especially medication counselling
• Reimbursement of medicines and expensive medicines in the outpatient care
• Digital tools: Kanta services such as e-prescription, MyKanta, cross-border prescription, and Kanta medicine list
• Sustainable pharmacotherapy.

2. Patient involvement in the pharmacotherapy process, with a focus on primary care.

• Patient perception of the functionality of the pharmacotherapy process
• Patients’ experience of patient counselling, medicines information and medication counselling
• Patients’ experience of pharmacotherapy monitoring
• Implementation of pharmacotherapy monitoring, role of different actors and cooperation in pharmacotherapy monitoring
• Patients’ experience of factors influencing medication adherence.

Our aim is to be a preferred partner for pharmaceutical policy research in Finland and internationally.

Cooperation and expertise

We conduct our research based on the principles of co-research, i.e., with patients from the design phase of the study onwards. We have a patient member in our research team. We conduct multidisciplinary research in broad collaboration with pharmaceutical stakeholders. National partners include Fimea, Kela, THL, STM, University of Helsinki, Demos Helsinki, Finnish Pharmacists’ Association and University Pharmacy. International partners include COST ENABLE, University of Tartu, Comenius University Bratislava, University of Malta and University of Copenhagen.

Our research team has strong expertise in pharmaceutical systems and their regulated environment. We utilize social science research methods, including various survey and interview methods. We also carry out, for example, register research and systematic reviews. Our doctoral researchers are part of the Doctoral Programme in Drug Research.