Dr Neal Dave Explains Why Biosimilars Should Be Favored Over Reference Products

Neal Dave, PharmD, the executive director of pharmacy at Texas Oncology, discusses the potential for biosimilar utilization to grow and the reasons why his practice favors them over reference products.

Transcript:

Would you say that there’s still plenty of room for growth of biosimilars in oncology, given current regimens and actual use relative to the need?

There's room. So, I can speak for where I work and I know we've gone all in on the biosimilars as they came out, specifically last year, and we're using close to 90%, and over 90% in some of the biosimilars that are out there. So, there's still a little bit of room even for us to grow. A lot of times what happens is a research protocol, like in our case, where it's mandated to use the brand [reference product], or it's maybe a payer that's doing that. But if we have the choice, in our case, we're using biosimilar because it does decrease the cost of care and it's essentially the same product. It's not entirely a generic, but you have the same effectiveness. And so, the FDA has approved it that way and so we've used them that way. Now, I don't know if that's the case across the whole health care spectrum, in every clinic and every hospital system. So, there is room, I think, still for growth for sure to decrease the overall cost of care.