Digital Health & AI

Aspirin is celebrating its 125^th anniversary this year. To find out what brand owner Bayer Consumer Health is doing to celebrate this occasion, and what it is doing to take the brand into the next 125 years, HBW Insight chats with the company’s senior vice president, Global Head Allergy, Cough/Cold, Pain and Heart Health, Reese Fitzpatrick, and head of R&D, North America and Therapeutics, Rachel Koontz.

Bumble and bumble follows Too Faced and Clinique, also with their own storefronts within Amazon’s Premium Beauty space. Lauder notes the broader reach and the importance of meeting consumers where they already are shopping.

Doctor's Best acquires Viactiv calcium and magnesium brand from Guardion; VitaliyNow is Society Brands’ third 2024 acquisition; and VitaminLab formulation services on CharmHealth.

Andrew Trister, Verily’s chief medical and scientific officer, discusses Verily’s newly launched Lightpath Metabolic solution, featuring GLP-1 prescription, AI and strengthened clinical support. Plus, the Google health tech spinout's plans for the Study Watch, the Alzheimer’s research landscape, and AI development and regulation in a new era of uncertainty.

When it comes to online consumer health product advertising, complying with regulations, ensuring that content is factually correct and being transparent are some of the key principles that companies should adhere to, recommends AESGP in a recently published position paper. 

The AI medtech revolution could be a “huge, missed opportunity” for the EU without an effective and efficient regulatory infrastructure. Answers are needed fast, MedTech Europe’s Oliver Bisazza said during a recent interview.

Leading digital therapeutic maker’s CEO David Benshoof Klein and CMO Shaheen Lakhan discuss outlook on the DTx space, priorities going forward, and what makes Click a standout player in a changing game.

Real-world data and evidence, for example generated by digital consumer health technology like apps and wearables, could provide crucial support for Rx-to-OTC switch applications, argues Sanofi Consumer Healthcare’s Penny Glover at the Association of the European Self-Care Industry's 60th Annual Meeting in Brussels, Belgium. Recent research by Sanofi indicates that regulators are actually already using RWD and RWE in many cases when assessing switch applications, even if they do not call it that. 

The BBB National Programs, Inc.’s Children’s Advertising Review Unit reminds advertisers its Advertising and Privacy Guidelines extend to the use of AI in ads for children and points them to its recent warning that it will ‘strictly enforce’ those guidelines.

Industry can look forward to a global OTC market compound annual growth rate of around 7% over the next few years, according to IQVIA Consumer Health. Innovation will be key to ensure individual companies realize this level of growth. IQVIA CH's Amit Shukla and Simon-Kucher & Partners' Clemens Oberhammer point to some key consumer trends to keep an eye on at the recent AESGP Annual Meeting in Brussels. 

Failing to take sufficient action on climate change could be a costly business for consumer health companies. However, the good news from the AESGP's 60th Annual Meeting in Brussels, Belgium, is that at least half of the cost of decarbonizing will be balanced by savings, according to Boston Consulting Group. And climate change adaption will present firms with a wide variety of opportunities for product innovation, IQVIA Consumer Health's Volker Spitzer tells delegates.

During recent investor conference, president Stephan Gratziani and CFO John DeSimone discuss Herbalife’s restructuring in addition to progress on digital transformation program and lack of progress on expectations for marketing to consumers prescribed GLP-1 drugs for weight loss.

International Food Additives Council suggests master file system will be redundant to submitting NDINs required for some dietary ingredients. IFAC also asks FDA to clarify whether the history of a substance’s use in food “is at the strain level or species level.”

CRN is “disappointed the draft guidance was not accompanied with an announcement by FDA of its commitment to rigorously enforce the NDI notification requirement.” CHPA says NDIN “requirement is only meaningful if FDA consistently takes enforcement action against manufacturers and distributors” noncompliant with the requirement.

Latest moves on selling to consumers using GLP-1 receptor agonist drugs for obesity come from firms as large as global food products manufacturer and marketer Nestle and as small as startup Promino and as ambitious as men’s health product marketer Ro offering an app at no charge to find GLP-1 drugs.

Cedars-Sinai’s Virtual Medicine director Brennan Spiegel discusses the shortage of mental health professional resources and how Medical Extended Reality – e.g., immersing patients in a virtual world with an AI therapy avatar – is helping to address depression, pain, and a growing host of health and wellness needs in hospital and consumer settings.