Over the next five years, more than 70% of the medicines used today for the main diseases will be made up of equivalent, i.e. off-patent, medicines. This was revealed by the experts gathered at the conference "Generic drug and biosimilar, two opportunities for the governance of pharmaceutical expenditure: present and future", held at the University of Rome La Sapienza. «The high quality of these medicines at contained costs, due to the lack of patent coverage» explains Giorgio Foresti, president of Assogenerici «allows today an average saving of 55% compared to the original medicines. Today in Italy more than half of the drugs on the market are off-patent and in the coming years almost all of the molecules will be". This means that, for many drugs, there will be the possibility of having the corresponding generic. «The resulting healthy competition allows the citizen and the Health Service» continues Foresti «to have high quality products at increasingly low prices. But in our country there is still a long way to go: if, in fact, in Germany and England the 50-70% of the drugs dispensed is generic, in Italy only the 12% is generic, even if this percentage is growing from year to year». A change that is also taking place in hospitals "thanks to the introduction of biosimilar medicines" concludes Foresti "that is, biotechnological medicines with expired patents produced with advanced technologies, whose efficacy and safety is comparable to that of the originals, but at a lower cost" .
Pharmacist33 – 25 May 2011
