Dr Nicholas Robert on Lag Time Between Drug Approval, Availability of the Drug in EMRs

Nicholas Robert, MD, medical director of Data, Evidence & Insights, McKesson Life Sciences, discusses the lag time between a drug's approval and its availability in the electronic medical record (EMR) for the physician to order.

Transcript

What is the typical lag time between a drugs approval and its availability in the electronic health records with the physicians being able to order it?

One of the challenges is when there is a new regimen that’s been approved, how long is it going to take to get into the EMR, remembering that the electronic medical records is the platform for choosing your regimens. We recently looked at this and presented as a poster at ISPOR this year where we looked at NCCN and approved regimens through the National Network of Cancer Centers and we found it was on average 15 days between approval by NCCN and being incorporated into our EMR. So, physicians on average only had to wait 2 weeks for them to be able to have this new regimen, and also some of this comes with new biomarker information so we’ve done the same. We’re incorporating new biomarkers that will direct you to new treatment in the same fashion with the same sort of turnaround time.