Biosimilar medicines represent an essential opportunity to optimise patient access to high quality treatments and the efficiency of healthcare systems worldwide, according to the white paper “Delivering on the Potential of Biosimilar Medicines: The Role of Functioning Competitive Markets”, published by the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics this week. Some 50 new products in clinical development are expected to increase access to medicines through price competition across Europe and the US through 2020.
The white paper highlights the extraordinary contribution of biosimilar medicines to the growing demand of patients to access effective gold standard biological therapies and to address the sustainability of healthcare budgets. The white paper advocates for rapid biosimilar medicines uptake and for a sustainable biosimilar market environment, underlining that patient access to biologic treatments has grown by as much as 100 percent following the availability of biosimilar medicines. In order to maximise the benefits of biosimilars, the report says that acceptance of biosimilar medicines is the largest contributor to success.
Medicines for Europe Director General, Adrian van den Hoven, welcomed the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics publication: “This white paper confirms the efforts made by biosimilar manufacturers to invest strongly in better access for patients and more sustainability to pharmaceutical markets across the world. With more than 10 years of positive patient treatment experience and some 20 products successfully launched in Europe, biosimilar medicines provide a huge opportunity today to deliver significantly improved access to modern therapies for millions of European patients in both chronic and acute care in areas such as cancer, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis or other immune-related diseases. Biosimilar medicines answer one of Europe’s major healthcare challenges: how to ensure that all European patients get equitable access to treatment”.