Interviews

Ongoing regulatory issues and restrictive marketing rules are prompting CBD brands to pivot to functional mushrooms, the market for which in the UK is predicted to reach a value of £62m by 2025. With both reportedly offering cognitive health benefits, marketing mushrooms and CBD makes good strategic sense, explains Nootro Group CEO Cary Holmes in this HBW Insight deep dive. 

In this episode, HBW Insight catches up with UK switch specialists Maxwellia to find out what’s next for the company that gave to the UK one of the first OTC daily contraceptive pills. Now a disruptive consumer health player in its own right, the company is looking for investors to take it to the next level and help launch two new women’s health products in the pipeline for next year, CEO Anna Maxwell reveals in this exclusive interview.

London-based start-up Phizz markets in the UK's busy wellness category effervescent products that it claims effectively hydrate while also providing essential vitamins and minerals.

Director-general John Chave discusses regulatory heavy-handedness in the EU, implications for animal testing, declining European investment, and Cosmetics Europe’s message to policymakers going into the 2024 EU elections and beyond.

The European Commission’s proposal for revising the EU’s regulation on cosmetic products is likely to release in the 2023 fourth quarter as a “caffeinated or slightly decaffeinated” distillation of the Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability, Cosmetics Europe director-general John Chave says. Prospects for the proposed regulation are questionable in light of EU elections slated for June 2024.

Flarin Holdings recently secured £5m ($6.2m) investment from UK television company ITV's Media for Equity fund in return for a minority stake in the company, which markets analgesic brand Flarin in the UK. The investment could be a springboard for international expansion, including in the US, Flarin's managing director Philip Lindsell tells HBW Insight in an exclusive in-depth interview.

In the second part of HBW Insight’s exclusive interview with OTC industry veteran Birgit Schuhbauer, we discuss the trends that will shape the future of consumer health. Drawing on her extensive experience in OTC, most recently as global vice president of J&J’s Self Care franchise and president of the AESGP, Schuhbauer gives her views on consumer shifts towards self-care and prevention, digitalization and e-commerce, supply chain resilience and sustainability. Schuhbauer also offers an insiders perspective on moves by companies like Kenvue and Haleon to spin out as independent OTC players, and the implications for Rx-to-OTC switch.

Taking over from the son of the company’s founder at the beginning of 2023, Martin Arès, the CEO of Canadian generics manufacturer Pharmascience, talks to Generics Bulletin about investment, international expansion and biosimilars.

In this episode, HBW Insight talks to BSS Consulting’s Birgit Schuhbauer about her stellar career in consumer health. Until recently, Schuhbauer was global vice president of Johnson & Johnson’s Self Care franchise and president of the Association of the European Self-Care Industry. Now running her own consulting business, Schuhbauer reflects in this first part of a two-part exclusive interview on her career highlights, what it takes to be a leader in OTC and on her role as the AESGP’s first female president during a time of unprecedented change.

What makes a winning entry for an OTC Marketing Award? HBW Insight speaks to long-standing judge Stephen Mann, an independent consultant and Rx-to-OTC switch expert, who has worked for and with some of the largest consumer healthcare firms in the world. 

In this special podcast episode, we speak to PAGB CEO Michelle Riddalls about her role as an OTC Marketing Awards judge and what makes a good entry in her extensive experience. Having spent two decades working in some of the world's largest OTC companies, and now heading up the UK’s OTC industry association which plays an important role in reviewing members' marketing campaigns before they go live, Riddalls is well placed to offer advice to companies working on their entries. Making submissions UK-specific, data-driven but also inclusive of all the creativity that teams bring to a launch or campaign are some of the pointers Riddalls shares with us. Friday 1 September is the entry deadline for the 2023 Awards, which take place at the Royal Lancaster London on Thursday 23 November. If you are interested in entering, head over to Citeline’s 2023 UK OTC Marketing Awards website.

Robert Steinbrook, the 50-year-old health group's third director, plans to stay true to organization’s long-held mission of holding FDA drug approvals to high standards, pushing for stronger evidence of benefit, more attention to safety, and advisory committee votes.

In the second part of HBW Insight’s interview with Bristows' digital health regulatory expert Jamie Hatzel, we talk about artificial intelligence. Hatzel discusses what happens to Software as a Medical Device within the incoming EU artificial intelligence legislation, which has now entered trilogue negotiations. Issues such as the meaning of “high risk” within the proposed AI Act, in contrast to its meaning in the existing Medical Device Regulations, highlight the importance for manufacturers in this space, or thinking about entering it, of getting good advice, Hatzel points out.

In the first of a new series profiling small- and medium-sized innovative players in the European consumer healthcare market, HBW Insight speaks to Swedish “revolutionary pre-drinking pill” manufacturer De Faire Medical.

Digitalization is a hot topic in consumer health, and “digital health” covers a broad spectrum of applications, from wellness apps to virtual reality therapeutics. In this episode of Over The Counter, HBW Insight speaks to Jamie Hatzel, regulatory associate at law firm Bristows, to get some clarity on “software as a medical device” – a subset of medical device regulatory frameworks within which many digital health applications are classified. In the first part of a two-part podcast, Hatzel outlines the UK and EU regulatory approaches to SaMDs, before we discuss specific examples such as symptom trackers, wellness apps and digital therapeutics.

In this episode, we explore recent consumer interest in prescription weight loss drugs such as Novo Nordisk's Wegovy with gut health expert Stephen O’Hara. As CEO of microbiome specialist OptiBiotix Health, O’Hara points to over-the-counter alternatives like prebiotic food supplements and medical devices, which may offer similar hunger-reducing benefits without the side effects associated with these drugs. By successfully negotiating health claim regulations, as well as investing in new markets and in new delivery formats like gummies, companies like Optibiotix are looking to take advantage of this new interest in slimming solutions, he explains.