Healthcare products, defined as medicines and medical devices for individual use, are prescribed and dispensed to patients in order to diagnose or treat them. In 2023, almost 15,000 drugs references were covered by the national health insurance system. Medical devices, on the other hand, comprise a vast array of very different products, including dressings, wheelchairs and syringes, for example. In this report, the notion of "proper use" covers three dimensions. The first is the actual use of healthcare products, which corresponds to products that are prescribed, dispensed and reimbursed, but destroyed without being used. The second is whether the consumption of a health product complies with health recommendations.
The third concerns the efficiency of healthcare product consumption in terms of value for money. Thenotion of “proper use” used here therefore goes well beyond the common understanding of the absenceof “waste”.
