Factors Affecting Medicine-Induced Demand and Preventive Strategies: A Scoping Review

Context: Increasing demand for medicines can influence the health system performance and impose a financial burden on individuals and society. Therefore, the current study aimed to investigate factors affecting the induced demand for medicines and provide strategies to address the issue. Evidence Acquisition: A scoping review was conducted using three databases including PubMed, Cochrane Library, and Embase from January 1990 until March 2017. By defining inclusion and exclusion criteria, 33 papers that considered the factors affecting the induced demand for medicines and the strategies to reduce the demand were included in the study. The papers were used to extract common themes. Results: The final factors were categorized into eight groups, including monitoring mechanisms, demand-side factors, supply-side factors, structural factors, legal-political factors, insurance coverage and subsidies, commercial interactions and advertisements, and educational factors. In addition, strategies to address them were extracted. Conclusions: Since in developing countries the most important factors are the lack of a comprehensive monitoring system and supply-side factors, it seems that monitoring mechanisms such as performance audit and guideline development can reduce the induced demand for medicines.