Dr Ryan Haumschild Speaks on How Local, National Policy Can Increase Confidence in Interchangeability

Ryan Haumschild, PharmD, MS, MBA, from Emory Healthcare and Winship Cancer Institute, describes how local health policy initiatives can help providers and patients feel more comfortable with the idea of interchangeable biosimilars.

Transcript

What policy initiatives can be adopted to ensure that concerns regarding interchangeability are mitigated and that patients are confident in the efficacy of all biosimilars?

So, I think there's policies both nationally [and] locally in our own health systems where we can drive forward the most change. And I think we need to learn from our European colleagues: How do we leverage real-world evidence so people can understand the benefits of it?

I think when we look at policies too, we recognize that with interchangeability by the FDA, not every [company is] going for it, and we recognize that it takes extra money to get an FDA approval with interchangeability.

So, how do we leverage some of our pharmacy and therapeutics policies to determine that if biosimilars are approved, we consider them equally efficacious? And that allows us to go ahead and interchange products upon dispensation with approval of the medical executive board. I think that really creates change much faster. We don't have to wait on certain therapies being interchangeable or not interchangeable, and at the end of the day, it allows us to drive consistent care.

And lastly, how do we leverage data from curative intent patient populations to noncurative intent patient populations and across different disease states, both oncology and nononcology?