This book introduces tools for evaluating healthcare costs and comparing health-based quality-of-life outcomes in drug research, design, manufacture and marketing--with an emphasis on economic analysis. The 14 chapters are divided into 3 sections that introduce the drug-approval process, evaluating evidence and pharmacoeconmoics. Topics include random controlled testing, cost-analysis and economic modeling, medical and prescription claims databases, and health surveys and statistical methods in biomedical research. Each of the sections comes with an over-view and each chapter concludes with a summary, case studies and references. This book is written for pharmacists and students of pharmacology. Annotation ©2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)