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WiP Seminar: Mark Harrison
June 11 @ 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm
Mark Harrison, PHD, MSC
Scientist, Advancing Health
Associate Professor, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, UBC
Affiliate Scientist, Arthritis Research Canada
Collaboration for Outcomes Research and Evaluation Professorship in Sustainable Health Care, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, UBC
Were there any unintended consequences of non-medical switching under the Biosimilars Initiative in BC?
In 2019, British Columbia (BC) became the first jurisdiction in North America to introduce a mandatory non-medical switching (NMS) policy requiring patients with conditions including rheumatoid arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, Crohn’s disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC) to be switched from originator biologics to biosimilar equivalents to maintain coverage under Fair PharmaCare. This presentation examines the influence of the Biosimilars Initiative NMS policy on the longer-term infliximab and adalimumab biosimilar utilization patterns and examines patterns of continuation and discontinuation of biosimilars. We used health administrative data from BC to study drug utilization trends between 2015 and 2022 and an interrupted time series design with segmented regression analysis to evaluate the impact of the Biosimilars Initiative on the utilization of biosimilars for infliximab and adalimumab. We also explore discontinuation of biosimilars post-NMS. Our results suggest that the Biosimilars Initiative NMS in BC was successful in switching patients to biosimilars and that most patients remained on biosimilar versions.
This is a virtual event.
