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Savings from biosimilars reached an all-time high in 2021

Home/Reports | Posted 11/03/2022 0 Post your comment

A recent report has highlighted how despite the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the volume of biosimilar prescribing has generated a record high in savings from biosimilar competition.

The report, which was carried out by data analysis firm IQVIA at the request of the European Commission, found that list price savings (excluding confidential rebates and discounts) accounted for €5.7 billion in savings versus the pre-biosimilar cost of the originator in 2020, see Figure 1.

Figure 1: List price savings from biosimilar competition

Source: IQVIA [1].

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in increasing government debt, which could lead to a focus on easily accessible savings rather than on long-term savings. Due to this, IQVIA believes that ‘ensuring biosimilar competition takes place in a timely manner could be at risk, taking second place to driving uptake. However, a short-term perspective will result in an unsustainable market in a time where system resilience is increasingly important’.

The report concludes that, although savings are naturally higher in countries that have a high use of biologicals, even countries with low usage have seen reductions of 1.5%‒2.5% on their total drug spend.

Conflict of interest
The authors of the report [1] did not provide any conflict-of-interest statement.

Editor’s comment
Readers interested to learn more about savings from biosimilar competition are invited to visit www.gabi-journal.net to view the following manuscript published in GaBI Journal:

Saving money in the European healthcare systems with biosimilars

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Reference
1. Troein P, Newton M, Scott K, et al. The impact of biosimilar competition in Europe: December 2021. IQVIA.

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