Aflibercept day preparations
Posted in Announcement, News
Aflibercept biosimilars
With the upcoming release of aflibercept biosimilars, we have generated a number of reports to help trusts monitor their current usage and prepare for the switch.
The report* Aflibercept intravitreal Actual Product use shows a detailed view of the current products being used and will start to show the biosimilar uptake as the months progress. Also the Aflibercept intravitreal biosimilar use will show total biosimilar vs original product use irrespective of the brand or brand of biosimilar.
The reports are essential for pharmacy teams wanting to track prescribing trends and readiness for biosimilar adoption as well as benchmark uptake against regional and national peers. The data will also be used at national level for monitoring.
Call to Action:
As part of this, and to ensure we provide you the best information possible, we have reviewed all pharmacy system descriptions for aflibercept and found that 44% do not specify the brand name in the description. Currently all these items are mapped to the Eylea brand but if the same description is used for the biosimilar products, the data becomes irregular and can no longer be used to track biosimilar uptake. To ensure good data quality we strongly suggest creating a new line which confirms the brand is Eylea and another for each biosimilar you may purchase. If you would like more information about how the description affects the data sent to the Rx-info system feel free to get in touch.
We have a number of existing biosimilar reports covering the majority of existing switches which can be used to ensure biosimilar levels remain at the recommended limit as well as new reports covering possible future switches. They can be found under the Biosimilar and Generic Switches report section on both Define and Refine.
*Access to reports require you to be an NHS user with HSCN access and are not available to external users.