Abstract:

Estimations of the potential market volume for new products should be developed from clinical and epidemiological data (number of patients) as a basis, rather applying straightforward estimations of sales volumes. The goals of the study presented here were twofold: Estimate the number of patients suffering from specific fungal infections Develop an operating procedure to estimate the incidence and prevalence figures for systemic mycosis for published clinical and epidemiological data. The technical difficulty was to put the pieces of information together in an appropriate manner, in order to obtain reliable and reproducible data. As a part of the project some operating procedures for the retrieval, selection and documentation (single item references) were established. To ensure the best possible quality of data, the estimation and forecasting of mean lower and upper bound for data values was required. Some basic guidelines for data selection and data modelling were developed. The database software was chosen with respect to easy handling, updating and viewing of data.