FDA - Notice of Intent to Sole Source -Biosimilar Education for Patients and Healthcare Providers: Medscape and WebMD

The Food and Drug Administration intends to make a sole source award to provide “Biosimilar Education for Patients and Healthcare Providers: Medscape and WebMD”. The award will be made to:

WebMD Health Corp. (MedScape)

395 Hudson St Fl 3 New York, NY 10014 DUNS: 602670742

In accordance with FAR 6.302-1, Only one responsible source and no other supplies or services will satisfy agency requirements.

This requirement is to is to develop and provide accredited continuing education content to health care providers, including doctors, pharmacists, and nurses that education them about biosimilar and interchangeable products, including but not limited to information about the development of these products, the regulatory review process, clinical outcomes, and practical applications and use of these products. The required effort entails developing continuing education courses in a variety of formats to engage target audiences and to offer a range of CE options so that health care providers can learn the basics or chose to spend more time learning more in-depth scientific, medical, and practical information about these products. This content and the developed CE programs will increase clinical competency for providers so they feel confident prescribing and using biosimilars and interchangeable products as well as educating their patients about them.

WebMD Health Corp, is the sole provide of Improving understanding of biosimilars among patients, Clinicians and payors is a key element of the FDA’s Biosimilars Action Plan (BAP), and considered critical by multiple stakeholders, including industry, Congress and Healthcare members, to enhance confidence and facilitate biosimilar uptake. To reach a broader audience, it is important to use a common reference source which appeals to a broad stakeholder group, and there is no organization that has a better reach than Medscape, which has been an online healthcare education resource for 25 years, and a has a membership of over 750, 000 physicians in the US, including 599, 000 mobile users, and 2.2 million other healthcare providers, including nurses, Nurse Practitioners (NP), Physician Assistants (PA) and allied healthcare providers. Medscape’s membership data is validated each night against the American Medical Association (AMA) master database and NPI database.

Medscape is an operating division of WebMD Health Corp and therefore has the capability to deliver education to patients as well as providers. WebMD has an audience of 79M consumers. Medscape primary care pages receive over 8.5 million monthly page views. Medscape also has specialty focused programming and CE in multiple formats and continuously updates their content. Access to physicians and other health care professionals is paramount to increase education about biosimilar and interchangeable product. Medscape can provide access to almost 4.5 million health care professionals. This broad and widely available access will increase exposure to FDA content about biosimilar and interchangeable products, greatly facilitating educational efforts. Medscape continuing education courses developed with other Federal Partners had a range of 380,000-117,000 clinician learners who took these courses.