Interviews

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.

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.

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.

In this episode of HBW Insight's Over the Counter podcast, we chat with women’s health start-up The SABI about the power of herbal medicine for hormonal wellness.

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.

In this episode of HBW Insight's Over the Counter podcast, we unpack the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) with the help of ESG expert Jasper Crone, drilling down into exactly what consumer health companies need to know about this enormously complex and significant piece of EU legislation.

Karo Healthcare has big plans for its expanding range of global OTC brands, the firm reveals in this exclusive Q&A. 

Packaging manufacturer Logoplaste – supplier to major consumer health and cosmetics firms – speaks to HBW Insight about plastics and working with industry to develop alternatives.

In this episode, HBW chats with John Hite of leading producer responsibility organization Circular Action Alliance, which is administering extended producer responsibility (EPR) programs under new laws entering into force in three states next year. With a 1 July deadline to register with CAA, Hite discusses steps companies should take now, how his organization will assist producers and estimates for collecting fees.

Bayer Consumer Health and its effervescent vitamin brand Berocca were subjects of denigratory remarks by an online competitor in a recent UK advertising complaint ruling. The ASA’s Freddie Alcock talks HBW Insight through the complaint, explaining in this exclusive interview why denigration is never a good look for advertisers.

Focus and persistence are the keys to successful brand and company growth, according to TheOTCLab's founder and CEO Albert Swane, speaking to HBW Insight's Over The Counter podcast. 

In this episode of the updated Over The Counter podcast, HBW Insight speaks to sustainable packaging expert Tony Perrotta about the complexities of replacing plastic pill packs in medicines packaging. Perrotta is a partner at PA Consulting, which set up the Blister Pack Collective alongside consumer health players Haleon, Bayer and Sanofi. They are working with PulPac, which has invented a dry molded fiber alternative to plastic, which the Collective hopes to commercialize within 12-24 months. We discuss whether regulators will accept such alternatives, given the safety and stability requirements for medicines, and the challenges of recycling, given the multitude of different frameworks and processes across the world. Perrotta also reveals that one of the partners in PA Consulting’s Bottle Collective, which hopes to replace plastic bottles in the food, personal care and consumer health industries, will soon launch its first market trial.

CRN’s request for clarification, as it continues litigating complaint in US District Court for Southern New York, highlights what it contends is vague and overly general language in the legislation passed in October with a 22 April effective date.

“Consumers are rewriting the rules when it comes to where they are going for information and the type of information they are looking for,” reports Kaizo’s Anita Nahal, speaking to HBW Insight’s Over the Counter podcast about the agency’s latest Communicating Health Messages report. Trust in social media has increased, and personal beliefs and lived experiences are playing a larger role in shaping attitudes to health information, explains Nahal, who is director at the London-based PR agency. However, consumers are also continuing to “tune-out” from health messages and be less critical of sources. To help consumers navigate this new reality, consumer health companies need to adapt, rethink and reset their communication strategies, Nahal advises.

There’s no simple answer to the question of how to make medicines packaging sustainable, says international recycling consultancy and Veolia Group subsidiary Circpack. “Manufacturers need to assess what works best for them, and recyclers will do the same,” Circpack analyst and circular packaging expert Filipe Vieira de Castro tells HBW Insight in this exclusive Q&A. “The best thing we can all do is put effort into finding common ground between systems, which comes down to better understanding the complexities between them.”