Medicines have currently a fundamental role in health care, especially in the oncology field. Providing quality aid to the person with cancer and making decisions is at present submitted to a series of factors such as the recent development of new medicines and new therapeutic targets, the increase in the use of medicines, literature contradictory in its results, increase in the invoices of medicines and increase in the expectations of the patients. For this reason, the selection of medicines as step subject to the development of protocols and clinical guides should be carried out with a standardized methodology.

The Pharmacy-therapeutic Commission is a technical organ of advice, consultation, coordination and information related to the medicines at the hospital. According to the OLMOS the selection of medicines is “a continuous, multidisciplinary and participatory process that should be developed based on the efficacy, security, quality and price of the medicines in order to assure rational uses of the medicines”.
The selection of medicines is necessary so much for the imperative need to ensure the access of the sick ones to the medicine in adequate conditions of quality and security, as for the objective to implement a global strategy of use of medicines in the institution.

The fundamental features of the medicine selection process should be: