Factors influencing pharmaceutical pricing - a scoping review of academic literature in health science

INTRODUCTION: Pharmaceutical pricing has only recently gained space in mainstream health science literature. OBJECTIVES: Bibliometric and content description of health science academic literature and ad hoc analysis of grey literature on factors influencing pharmaceutical pricing on databases commonly accessed by healthcare professionals. METHODS: Scoping study with no time limits performed in Medline, Scopus and Scielo, and relevant sites and databases for grey literature, using search terms with database-appropriate keywords. RESULTS: Two hundred four articles were published in 103 peer-reviewed journals between 1981 and 2016 (last search year). In grey literature 78 documents were retrieved in the final selection. Five key thematic clusters for analysing pharmaceutical pricing emerged: market dynamics, segmented into (i) supply-related, (ii) consumer-related and (iii) product-related; (iv) trading strategies, either buyer’s or seller’s and (v) regulatory approach. In peer-reviewed literature there is an overall dominance of themes referring to trading strategies and regulatory approaches and a wide thematic cluster scope. Over half of this literature was produced after the year 2010. International agency technical papers make up the most significant contributions of grey literature, with a clear focus on regulatory approaches to pricing and wider consideration of emerging countries. Research lags in the literature on factors affecting pharmaceutical pricing include impacts of financing schemes, market liberalization, internet trading and biosimilars on prices, with insufficient discussion identified for the effects of discounts/rebates, profits and price transparency. CONCLUSIONS: Interest in pharmaceutical pricing literature is increasing. Robust evidence-producing study designs for pricing interventions will be a welcome development. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s40545-019-0183-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.