This article studies the determinants of pharmaceutical innovation diffusion amongudspecialists. To this end, it investigates the influences of six categories of factors—socialudembeddedness, socio-demography, scientific orientation, prescribing patterns, practiceudcharacteristics, and patient panel composition—on the use of new drugs for the treatment ofudtype 2 diabetes mellitus in Hungary. Here, in line with international trends, 11 brands wereudintroduced between April 2008 and April 2010, outperforming all other therapeutic classes.udThe Cox proportional hazards model identifies three determinants—social contagion (in theudsocial embeddedness category) and prescribing portfolio and insulin prescribing ratio (in theudprescribing pattern category). First, social contagion has a positive effect amongudgeographically close colleagues—the higher the adoption ratio, the higher the likelihood ofudearly adoption—but no influence among former classmates and scientific collaborators.udSecond, the wider the prescribing portfolio, the earlier the new drug uptake. Third, the lowerudthe insulin prescribing ratio, the earlier the new drug uptake—physicians’ therapeutic convictions and patients’ socioeconomic statuses act as underlying influencers. However, this finding does not extend to opinion-leading physicians such as scientific leaders and hospitaluddepartment and outpatient center managers. This article concludes by arguing that healthcare policy strategists and pharmaceutical companies may rely exclusively on practice location and prescription data to perfect interventions and optimize budgets.
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