Rafalska Y. Scientific and practical approaches to the health technology assessment in the pharmacotherapy of breast cancer.

This dissertation is dedicated to scientific research on determining the fundamental approaches to using Health Technology Assessment (HTA) in breast cancer (BC) pharmacotherapy. One of the essential tasks of the state and the healthcare system is to ensure the population has access to high-quality, effective, and affordable drugs. It is necessary to have the tools to achieve the most optimal results to accomplish this task. One such tool is the HTA, whose primary objective is the selection of economically viable and effective healthcare technologies (HTs) to ensure the rational utilization of financial resources of the state as a whole and individual patients. BC is a socially significant and highly costly disease. In the face of constantly rising prices for essential drugs, the expenses for treating this disease continue to increase, leading to reduced accessibility of these drugs for BC treatment. Therefore, the government implements various programs and tools, such as the HTA, to ensure that citizens, regardless of their economic status, access effective drugs. BC is the most common oncological disease among women in Ukraine and worldwide, leading to temporary disability during the illness and its treatment. Since each of the four stages of BC has specific treatment approaches and different pharmacotherapy regimens, the financial burden on each patient varies. To reduce costs in the future, it is advisable to optimize processes to providing pharmaceutical care by highly qualified professionals and organise health education efforts to prevent BC at the early stages of the disease.