Dr Fran Gregory: Providing Patients With High-Quality Biosimilars Is a Collaborative Effort

Knowing that a specific biosimilar will produce the same clinically signficant response as the branded medication is key to ensuring comfortabiltiy among patients and providers, says Fran Gregory, PharmD, vice president of emerging therapies at Cardinal Health.

Transcript

How can healthcare providers, pharmacists, and payers collaborate to ensure that patients have access to high-quality biosimilars and make informed decisions about their use in their treatment plans?

I think a lot of that goes back to educating the entire line of stakeholders, from the providers, from the pharmacists to the nurses administering it, the technicians in the pharmacy, all the way to the patient and their caregivers. Making sure that all those stakeholders are confident that this medication is clinically the same product, that they're going to have the same clinical benefits, they're not going to have different adverse events, they’re not going to develop immunogenicity. Creating confidence and a comfort level across every single one of those stakeholders is really a key piece to making sure that patients get access to these medications.

There have been a number of surveys where it is found that most providers are willing to prescribe a biosimilar. I think about 70% of patients say they would be happy to take a biosimilar if their health care providers reassured them with confidence that it was the same product, and they would get the same clinical response. So, it's really that reassuring of the patient that this is a good thing to do and, ultimately, will save the US health care system dollars and, hopefully, it will also save the patient money as well.