During the last session of the workshop the participants reviewed what could be learnt from the comparative nature of the research. They tried to achieve the following:

• discuss the extent to which the methodologies successfully accomplished this cross national comparison;

• identify and substantiate strengths and weaknesses of existing policy from cross national perspectives;

• propose explanations for cross national variations in performance; and

• identify specific policy innovations from cross national learning that can improve the implementation of pharmaceutical policies.

The conclusions presented below are preliminary and need further analysis.