Italians spend more 1 billion euros to consume a branded drug when they could consume an equivalent drug (at no cost to the patient).
L’AIFA (Italian Medicines Agency) defines equivalent drugs as: “medicinal products having the same qualitative composition, same amount of active ingredient, same pharmaceutical form, same route of administration, same release method and identical number of dosage units, of a specialty whose active ingredient is no longer covered by patent “
It is therefore important for Italian families to obtain good information from doctors and pharmacists to avoid unnecessary expenses because brand-name drugs exist (also expensive) whose price is 10 times that of the equivalent.
Equivalent drugs cost less on average. To find them there is the app Ioequivalgo.it
Use of drugs in Italy
In the lastNational Report 2023 “The use of drugs in Italy”, made byNational Observatory on the use of Medicines (OsMed) of AIFA, it was reiterated that:
- Costs borne by citizens, including the share of the participation (regional tickets and difference between the price of the expired patent medicine and the reference price), the private purchase of class A medicines and the expense of class C medicines, totaled 10,6 billion €, with an increase of 7,4% compared to 2022.
- In 2023 the 67,4% of the patients received at least one drug prescription, with a per capita expenditure of 207,41 euros and a consumption of 1.182,7 DDD/1000 inhabitants per day; there is a difference in exposure to drugs between the two sexes, with a prevalence reaching 63,0% in males and the 72,0% in females.
- Particularly, geographically speaking in our country we spend more on branded drugs in the Center- Sud. Spending is more limited in the North. Per capita spending and consumption increase with age, in particular the population with more than 64 years absorbs over the 60% of spending and doses.
Alex Gaetani
Read more:
OsMed National Report 2023 on the use of drugs in Italy