By Lee Ronan, Commercial Director, CSL
I was at a conference recently and one of the presentations was on biosimilars and specifically what the impact of a biosimilar launching would have on their brand. This got me thinking, surely the NHS publishes something useful on this topic?
Unsurprisingly, they do. I was able to obtain biosimilar uptake rates for Etanercept, Infliximab & Rituximab. These data are available from January 2017 (July 17 for Rituximab) up until January 2018, with a new monthly refresh due shortly. Even better, these data are published at NHS Trust level so you can quickly see how uptake varies from trust to trust.
To give you a few snippets as to what these data tell us: –
- Biosimilar uptake appears to get quicker with each new product that has a biosimilar launch
- 83 (about 65%) of all trusts that use Infliximab now have 90% or greater biosimilars usage vs 10% or less brand
- 21 of these have 100% biosimilar usage levels
- 89 trusts already have greater than 50% Rituximab biosimilar use, despite biosimilars only launching in Q2 2017
- There doesn’t appear to be a clear correlation between biosimilar uptake of one molecule vs another
So, to try and answer the question posed, I think it is clear to say biosimilars are a great opportunity (if you have one) and a massive threat (if one is launching against your brand).
If this sounds interesting to you and you want to know more, please contact me at LeeR@csl-uk.com
This is just one example of the value ‘open data’ can provide.
Source: NHS BSA, data released under the open government licence v3.0
