Dr Michael Chiang: How the National Eye Institute Is Building Confidence in Ophthalmology Biosimilars

Finding the right people to research ophthalmology biosimilars will be critical for the National Eye Institute (NEI) to help address hesitency and mistrust in these products among ophthalmologists, said Michael Chiang, MD, director of the NEI.

Transcript

What is the NEI approach to newly emerging ophthalmology biosimilars, especially as we begin to see hesitancy among retinal specialists to use biosimilars despite potential cost savings?

Chiang: This is an important question. At the National Eye Institute, our role is, basically, to identify important research studies and to support them. And hopefully, these are going to be the things that lead to advances in clinical care. With biosimilars, some of the fundamental questions are, of course, are they safe? Are they clinically effective? And are they cost-effective? And those are not exactly the same questio, and you don't study them the same way.

So, what I see as our role is, basically, we have to work with people in the community who want to study these questions, identify exactly how we're going to do them, and get the data to really answer the questions that ophthalmologists need.