OBJECTIVES

: To develop a budget impact model (BIM) to assess the economic impact of the use of intravenous (IV) biosimilar rituximab and trastuzumab in place of their reference drugs in both IV and the subcutaneous (SC) formulations from the perspectives of payers in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK.

METHODS

: An incidence- and market-based BIM was developed to estimate the net budget impact from the perspectives of payers by utilizing epidemiology data from the literature, market research data on the use of relevant treatments in all indications, and corresponding costs. The analysis compared a market scenario where a proportion of patients are treated with biosimilars (“World With” biosimilars) to an alternative market scenario where the biosimilars are not available and all patients are treated with the reference IV or SC products. (“World Without” biosimilars). The budget impact is estimated for the first five years following the introduction of the biosimilars.

RESULTS

: Compared to the “World Without” biosimilars, the introduction of biosimilar rituximab resulted in cost savings of €700 million in EU 5 countries over a 5-year period. Compared to the “World Without” biosimilars, the introduction of biosimilar trastuzumab resulted in cost savings of €440 million in EU 5 countries over a 5-year period. The saved budget from the introduction of biosimilar rituximab and trastuzumab would allow 57,000 and 10,000 additional patients to have access to rituximab and trastuzumab treatments, respectively.

CONCLUSIONS

: Increased uptake of biosimilar rituximab and trastuzumab may lead to substantial cost savings for payers and will allow to treat more patients with the saved budget. Given the results were based on the assumption that majority of SC-treated patients continued to receive the SC product, savings would be even higher if more patients were treated with biosimilar rituximab and trastuzumab.