Economic evaluation of medical technologies: from theory to practice--the German perspective.

This paper briefly describes the German health care system and the role of economic studies in medical technologies and drugs in a decentralized health care system like Germany's. It also provides a number of examples of studies which have been conducted recently in Germany and shows the variation of sponsors, study types, study perspectives and objectives of those studies. It concludes with an outlook on the future role of pharmaco-economic studies in Germany and the recently published German recommendations for conducting those studies.