Article Text
Abstract
Objective To investigate healthcare professionals’ knowledge and attitudes towards infliximab and insulin glargine biosimilars and the factors influencing their prescribing. Then, to compare healthcare professionals’ attitudes with the utilisation of these biosimilars in UK hospitals.
Design Self-administered, one-time web-based survey and drug utilisation analysis.
Setting and data sources Professional associations and societies in the field of dermatology, diabetology, gastroenterology and rheumatology in the UK, between 8 August 2016 and 8 January 2017. The volume of utilisation of branded and biosimilar infliximab and insulin glargine in UK hospitals was derived from the DEFINE database, between 2015 and 2016.
Outcomes Participants’ knowledge and awareness of biosimilars and factors influencing their use and corresponding usage of infliximab and insulin glargine biosimilars.
Results Responses were obtained from 234 healthcare professionals across dermatology, diabetology, gastroenterology and rheumatology specialties. 75% of respondents were aware that biosimilars were available on their local formulary. 77% of respondents considered biosimilars extremely or very important to save costs for the NHS. Gastroenterologists had the highest utilisation of infliximab biosimilars (14%) in 2015 rising to (62%) in 2016. Healthcare professionals had greater concerns about safety and efficacy when switching patients to biosimilars than when starting biosimilars in biological naïve patients. Guidance from National Institute for Health and Care Excellence and robust pharmacovigilance studies on biosimilars were both considered important factors in increasing biosimilars use.
Conclusion British healthcare professionals are well informed about biosimilars with high level of awareness. Safety and efficacy concerns were higher in switching than in initiating biosimilars among some prescribers. It is probable that personal experience of biologics as well as discipline-specific guidance influenced prescribers’ responses.
- Biosimilars
- infliximab
- insulin glargine
- healthcare professionals
- knowledge
- attitude
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Footnotes
Contributors All authors have contributed to this study, reviewed and approved the final version of the manuscript. SRC designed the study, interpreted the results and reviewed the manuscript and corrected the final version of the manuscript. RWF participated in the study design, interpreted the results and reviewed the manuscript and corrected the final version of the manuscript. MIA participated in the study design, data collection and interpretation of results, prepared the manuscript draft, and performed all analytical testing and manuscript review.
Competing interests None declared.
Patient consent Yes.
Ethics approval Independent Peer Review Committee at Keele University.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
Data sharing statement Data collected from survey are anonymised. The raw data from which result paper are derived can be made available on request.
Correction notice This paper has been amended since it was published Online First. Owing to a scripting error, some of the publisher names in the references were replaced with 'BMJ Publishing Group'. This only affected the full text version, not the PDF. We have since corrected these errors and the correct publishers have been inserted into the references.