Ryan Haumschild, PharmD, Advises Practices, Health Systems to Prep for Interchangeable Biosimilars

Ryan Haumschild, PharmD, MS, MBA, from Emory Healthcare and Winship Cancer Institute, gives an overview of what practices and health systems need to prepare for as more interchangeable biosimilars enter the US market.

Transcript

How do you think interchangeability will play into future decisions regarding formulary placement of biosimilars?

Interchangeability is a hot topic. We already have our first [interchangeable] insulin [biosimilar]. I saw it first it at The Center for Biosimilars^® when that news came out, and I think we're gonna see it in a lot more areas and so that gives pharmacy a lot more of that responsibility to change out the products as needed. I will say we've worked already to create a formulary P&T [pharmacy and thearapeutics] approval where we can exchange biosimilars as needed, based on payer preferences, based on organizational preferences, and that's worked out really well. But I think as you see interchangeability, you might see a little bit of leveraging those products that have better interchangeability come up forward a little more, because we can have better control, ultimately, of what we're dispensing to patients. And again, when you have better control and you have the potential to interchange, you just have to make sure you're doing it on label. So, it's little complex. I think we figured it out from a from a P&T perspective, but I do think it'll start to play more of a role as we preference and try to splice out the differences between therapies.