Date of release: 13 December 2022

Biosimilar medicines deliver access for patients suffering from serious and debilitating conditions such as cancer, auto immune diseases, and diabetes. The benefits of using biosimilar medicines center on increasing the number of patients treated, leading to better health, and further advantages to health systems and healthcare professionals.

New research presented by IQVIA has shown that biosimilar medicines deliver significant access and savings for patients and healthcare systems even with the challenges posed by the pandemic, economic pressure, and inflation.

Biosimilar medicines have now generated over 30 billion euro cumulated savings to re-invest in healthcare and 4.5 billion patient treatment days of positive experience. More than 850 million patient treatment days were recorded in 2022 alone using biosimilar medicines. Yet there is room to do better by stimulating biosimilar competition for a wide range of biologic medicines with smart and aligned EU and national policy measures. 

Speaking at the European Commission multistakeholder event on biosimilar medicines, Julie Maréchal-Jamil, Director of Biosimilars Policy at Medicines for Europe, said “Europe is the global leader in biosimilar medicines with massive increases in patient experience and more resources saved to re-invest in healthcare year after year. With better uptake policies, biosimilar medicines can reduce health inequities across Europe. The EU pharmaceutical legislative review is another opportunity to address some of this untapped potential by updating the regulation to the latest scientific data and experience.”  

Resource hub

The European Commission hosted a multistakeholder workshop on biosimilar medicines on 13 December 2022. For more information on the event, see https://health.ec.europa.eu/latest-updates/biosimilar-medicines-multistakeholder-event-13-december-2022-2022-10-19_en

The IQVIA report titled “The impact of biosimilar competition in Europe 2022” was published on 12 December 2022 and is available at https://www.iqvia.com/library/white-papers/the-impact-of-biosimilar-competition-in-europe-2022

The Biosimilar medicines group

The Biosimilar Medicines Group is a sector group of Medicines for Europe representing the leading companies developing, manufacturing and/or marketing biosimilar medicines across Europe. With more than 15 years of positive patient treatment experience, biosimilar medicines provide today a huge opportunity to deliver significantly improved access to modern therapies for millions of European patients in both chronic and acute care. Our members bring competition to the biological medicines market, thereby increasing access to highly innovative treatments to patients, in Europe and around the world, and supporting the sustainability of the European healthcare systems.

About Medicines for Europe

Medicines for Europe represents the generic, biosimilar and value added medicines industries across Europe. Its vision is to provide sustainable access to high quality medicines, based on 5 important pillars: patients, quality, value, sustainability and partnership. Its members directly employ 190,000 people at over 400 manufacturing and 126 R&D sites in Europe, and invest up to 17% of their turnover in R&D investment. Medicines for Europe member companies across Europe are both increasing access to medicines and driving improved health outcomes. They play a key role in creating sustainable European healthcare systems by continuing to provide high quality, effective generic medicines, whilst also innovating to create new biosimilar medicines and bringing to market value added medicines, which deliver better health outcomes, greater efficiency and/or improved safety in the hospital setting for patients. For more information please follow us at www.medicinesforeurope.com and on Twitter @medicinesforEU.

Medicines for Europe press contact:

Kate O Regan koregan@medicinesforeurope.com