The impact of an ‘evergreening’ strategy nearing patent expiration on the uptake of biosimilars and public healthcare costs:a case study on the introduction of a second administration form of trastuzumab in The Netherlands

In this paper, we explore dynamic market share and public healthcare costs of trastuzumab’s evergreening (subcutaneous) variant during introduction of trastuzumab’s competitive biosimilar variants in the Netherlands. We used a time series design to assess dynamic market share of trastuzumab’s evergreening variant after introducing trastuzumab’s biosimilar variants, focusing on the number of treatments and patients. The public healthcare costs of this evergreening strategy were estimated using administrative claims data. Our results show that the original trastuzumab was completely replaced by... Mehr ...