In summary, the workshop:

• provided one of the first occasions for countries to compare data collected in a standardized way. It showed the importance of having good methods and data and justified the WHO strategy of providing standardized methods for both national assessment and cross national comparison;

• permitted the review of the indicators and the political mapping as methods of policy analysis and assessments of NDP (field testing) and resulted in some improvements which will be incorporated in the next edition;

• allowed countries to share experiences in order to develop better approaches for policy formulation and implementation. Although there is no standard recipe for improving the policy process in countries, the workshop did come up with some useful conclusions;

• began the process of identifying specific strengths and weaknesses of existing policy from national and cross national perspectives; of generating hypotheses to explain how different pharmaceutical policies can affect the performance of the pharmaceutical sector; and of identifying specific policy innovations;

• showed the necessity to develop such research in countries with different socio-economic background; and to set up sustainable NDP monitoring systems in most countries;

• finally, enhanced the research capabilities of all the participants of the 12 countries.