AI-Powered Solutions for Streamlining Biosimilar Prescribing and Monitoring

Steve Pickette, PharmD, BCPS, chief clinical pharmacist at InpharmD, highlighted the transformative role of artificial intelligence (AI) in managing biosimilars and generics. He explains that AI can significantly reduce the workload for clinical and pharmacy staff by streamlining the analysis required for prescribing and formulary changes, enabling better engagement with health care providers. Additionally, AI enhances pharmacovigilance by monitoring formulary changes, tracking adoption rates among providers, and identifying potential issues.

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Transcript

How can AI help with the prescribing of biosimilars and generics and, can it aid in pharmacovigilance of these products?

Yes, it can aid in prescribing, in reducing the overhead burden of doing the analysis and free up the pharmacy drug information services or clinical staff to engage with the providers. And change management is always a big part of the formulary process—really the most challenging part and it seems like we never have the time to do it. And you get the analysis together as part of the P&T [Pharmacy and Therapeutics Committee], and you get it out there for the doctors, but I rarely would have the time to really engage them and go over it and look at it. So, it really aids in the process in that way.

And then you mentioned the vigilance of seeing how things have gone. That is another area where we never seem to have time. You do a formulary interchange, you've gone through the whole process, you've made the change, and you move to a different product, and then you move on to the next evaluation. And so it's always a kind of a stressor in the back of our minds for those of us that manage formularies. Is it still going okay? Has something changed? I think that's a big benefit of the use of AI-assisted analytic tools, such as what we've built, is it will track and alert you if something has changed or tell you that it's doing well and let you know how things are going. For example, there's a certain set of providers that aren't adopting it. That's another medication use evaluation process that's really challenging, labor-intensive, and time-consuming. So, [this technology] is really promising in all those regards.