In April 2016 INFARMED started publishing a set of Therapeutic Recommendations (TR) seeking to contribute to rationalize and increase the quality of medical prescription. The TRs will be published on a regular basis and shall focus on particular areas such as those where new scientific evidence arise or specific treatment trends that could be improved. The first TR covers the prescription of statins.

Statins are indicated for the treatment of hypercholesterolemia (high cholesterol), for the prevention of cardiovascular diseases associated to atherosclerosis. The ability to reduce total cholesterol and LDL-c differs between the various statins and depends on the dose administered. According to the TR issued by Infarmed:

- multiple studies have made it possible to establish the equivalence of LDL-c reduction of statins;
- the option of prescribers for statins that have generics reduces costs for the patient and for the Health System maintaining the same therapeutic efficacy. In particular, if half the patients currently treated with rosuvastatin and pitavastatin are treated with other generic drugs statins it would be possible to obtain savings of about 25ME in a total of 119ME spent in 2015 (over 13ME for patients and the remainder to the Health System).