Assessing Trends in the Rare Disease Space in Specialty Pharmacy

Pharmacy Times interviewed Sneha Sharma, director, specialty clinical solutions at Magellan Health, on her presentation at Asembia Summit 2022 titled Future Focused: Trends, Pipeline, and Oncology Highlights.

Question: What are some trends in the rare disease space that you’d recommend pharmacists keep an eye on?

Sneha Sharma: So currently, in terms of utilization, I recommend pharmacist keep an eye on [teprotumumab-trbw (Tepeeza)] utilization, [onasemnogene abeparvovec-xioi (Zolgensma)] utilization, [immune globulin injection (Gammaked)] utilization, as well as other high cost therapy drugs for this unique patient population.

Question: What lessons has the pandemic taught around the importance of strategizing for the future and also perhaps the occasional futility of certain aspects of preparing for the future in the field?

Sneha Sharma: I think the pandemic taught us that things can shut down and patients may defer treatment. So we need to be prepared to help patients that should not be deferring treatment or diagnostic [testing], to feel safe to come in and make sure that we're still diagnosing our patients that are maybe non-pandemic treated.