Assessment to inform corporate strategy based on P&MA issues with biosimilars

Our client was the Head of Global Pricing and Market Access in a mid-sized EU based global company with a successful background in cardiovascular disease and biologicals.

They wanted to explore a shift in business strategy towards the development and marketing of branded biosimilars.

Our client wanted to understand the likely reception of biosimilars by payers and clinicians in Europe, the US, and Brazil, as a key input into their strategic decision making.

The challenge

Our client’s biosimilar business strategy needed to consider a 5-year perspective on a new and emerging biosimilar environment.

To develop robust estimates and assumptions that could inform clear forecasting scenarios we sought external input, but this was challenging for payers because they were drawing on relatively little information/evidence.

How we helped

Solaris developed robust forecasting estimates and assumptions using insights from our assessment on the regulatory, pricing, and access situation in each market. This helped identify whether there were significant opportunities or challenges for biosimilar pricing and uptake by market.

In our approach, we first evaluated biosimilar analogues in each market, such as growth hormone and EPOs, through secondary research.

The learnings from this landscape assessment informed the preparation of discussion materials that we used during 1:1 discussions with clinicians and payers in each market to further assess biosimilar expectations.

Our final analyses and recommendations focused on the likely adoption of biosimilars, potential price levels, barriers to adoption and local formulary committee attitudes towards substitution.

Outcome

Our work was extremely well received by our client who has since publicly announced its intention to enter the biosimilar space.