5 December 2017 - Product familiarisation programs (sometimes also called ‘patient familiarisation programs’) are provided by pharmaceutical companies and are designed to familiarise prescribers with a newly approved medicine while PBS listing is pending. 

They are usually targeted at specialists and, according to Medicine Australia’s Code of Conduct, each individual prescriber can only enrol up to ten patients in a program. The enrolment period is limited to six months, however extensions are allowed if there is a strong clinical or equity rationale.

Probably the biggest product familiarisation program in Australia was conducted by Boehringer Ingelheim for the anticoagulant dabigatran (Pradaxa). Specialists and GPs were approached starting from June 2011 and around 25 000 patients were enrolled in total. The program was extended from June 2012 to December 2013 because the Government delayed PBS listing to review a report on anticoagulant therapies.

Read Australian Prescriber editorial