Knowledge, behaviors and practices of community and hospital pharmacists towards biosimilar medicines: Results of a French web-based survey

ABSTRACTThis study's aims were: 1) to extract a comprehensive overview of the knowledge, experience and opinions of both community pharmacists and hospital pharmacists regarding biosimilar medicines in France; and 2) to identify the perceived problems and solutions to promoting their prescription. A 2015 web-based survey was conducted by the Observatoire des Medicaments, des Dispositifs Medicaux et de l'Innovation Therapeutique of Alsace. A total of 802 pharmacists responded to the survey. Many (536, 66.8%, [95% confidence interval (CI) 63.6–70.1]) indicated that they were not familiar with biosimilars. Half of community pharmacists (95% CI 42.7–57.3) stated that they were not at all informed about biosimilar drugs, compared with 15.7% (95% CI 12.9–18.6) of hospital pharmacists. Almost all respondents (781, 97.4%, [95% CI 96.3–98.5]) had at least one pending question on biosimilars. Most of the questions were related to the manufacturing process, safety, substitution rules and the international non-propri...