On August 28th, the Journal of the Generics and Biosimilars Initiative (GaBI Journal) published a whitepaper entitled “European prescribers’ attitudes and beliefs on biologicals prescribing and automatic substitution”. The paper explores in detail the findings of ASBM’s survey of 579 prescribers of biologic medicines from 10 practice areas in 6 Western European countries.
Topics examined include physician perspectives on prescribing biosimilars, physician-led biosimilar substitution vs. third-party substitution, adverse event reporting, and design of government tenders.
As detailed in the paper, European physicians have increased their familiarity with biosimilars since last surveyed in 2013, but as their familarity increased, so too has the importance to them of maintaining control of treatment decisions:
- 82% consider maintaining physician control of treatment decisions to be very important or critical, representing a 10% increase from the 2013 survey.
- Physicians are also highly uncomfortable with a non-medical substitution initiated by a third party. This figure too has increased sharply since the 2013 survey: 73% are uncomfortable with this, compared to 58% in 2013.
- A strong majority (63%) consider it highly important for governments to make multiple therapeutic choices available in tenders, and a very strong majority (83%) believe these tenders should take into account factors besides price.
The paper will be also published in Issue 3 of the GabI Journal’s 2020 print edition this fall.
Read the full whitepaper online here.
