Background: As the economic burden of treating cancer patients has been soaring in European countries, performing a budget impact analysis is becoming one of the requirements for payers' application dossiers.
Objective: The objective of this study was to estimate the budgetary impact of introducing the biosimilar trastuzumab (CT-P6) from the payer's perspective and to determine the number of additional patients who could be treated with resulting savings in 28 European countries.
Methods: A budget impact model was developed to analyze the financial impact of switching from originator trastuzumab to biosimilar CT-P6 in the treatment of early and metastatic breast cancer and metastatic gastric cancer with a time horizon of 1-5 years. Budgetary savings and the number of patients potentially affected were measured based on epidemiological and sales volume data. The base-case analysis assumed that the price of CT-P6 is 70% of the originator price, the switching rate of originator to CT-P6 in the first year is 20%, and the annual growth in the switching rate for each subsequent year is 5%.
Results: For analyses using the base-case scenario following CT-P6 introduction, the total estimated budgetary savings over a 5-year period (depending on the scenario) ranged from €1.13 billion to €2.27 billion based on epidemiological data, or from €0.91 billion to €1.82 billion based on sales volume data. In the first year only, the projected budgetary savings ranged from €58 million to €136 million, and the number of additional patients who could be treated using the savings ranged from 3503 to 7078 by sensitivity analysis.
Conclusions: The conducted budget impact analysis assessing a switch from originator trastuzumab to biosimilar CT-P6 in 28 European countries indicates that budget savings could be between €0.91 billion and €2.27 billion over the next 5 years. These savings could be used to help improve patient access to local biologics in their respective countries while simultaneously strengthening the overall public health landscape across the European Union.