Biosimilar.
A near-identical successor to a biologic medicine after exclusivity ends. Not a generic, and visible in open data in a way generics never are.
A biosimilar is a highly similar version of a biological medicine, approved once the originator's exclusivity ends. Unlike generics, biosimilars are not automatically substitutable in the UK: they are prescribed by brand name, deliberately.
That prescribing-by-brand rule has a useful side effect for analysts. Generic markets hide manufacturer share, because a generically written prescription can be dispensed as anyone's product. Biosimilar markets show their switching in the data, brand by brand, month by month. The adalimumab switch from 2018 onwards remains the textbook case, and the same dynamics replay at each big biologic exclusivity expiry.
Secondary Care Medicines Data (SCMD) · Monthly hospital medicines data for England: what NHS trusts issued, in unit-of-measure quantities, with indicative costs.
BNF code · The 15-character legacy hierarchy the NHSBSA uses to code prescribing data, from chapter down to individual presentation.
See it on a real molecule.
Every molecule page uses this term somewhere: in the scorecard, the charts or the honesty strip. The definitions live here; the numbers live there.