On November 5th and 6th, ASBM exhibited virtually at American College of Rheumatology (ACR) Convergence 2020. The virtual conference took place ran from November 5 – 9, with dedicated exhibit hours on November 5th and 6th. More than 15,000 attendees from 106 countries attended the meeting.

ASBM’s virtual booth promoted recent ASBM whitepapers and posters, including a poster presented at the June 2020 EULAR E-Congress which drew from ASBM’s 2019 survey of rheumatologists across six Western European countries. Among the issues the survey covered are prescriber attitudes toward prescribing biosimilars to new patients, switching patients to biosimilars, and toward third party-initiated substitutions for nonmedical reasons. Key findings included:

• Rheumatologists were the most with familiar with biosimilars among the practice areas surveyed (99% familiar).
• They had a higher than average comfort level prescribing biosimilars to new patients: 60% of rheumatologists were “very comfortable” doing so, while the average figure across the ten specialties surveyed was 34%.
• Rheumatologists were also the least comfortable with a third party switching their patient for non-medical reasons (e.g. cost): 49% were “very uncomfortable” with this practice, compared to an average of 29% across all specialties.

Read more about ACR Convergence 2020 here. 

View the EULAR 2020 poster here.