Special Reports Archive

One disconnect Bausch + Lomb’s John Ferris sees in the conversation about health care is the relative lack of attention paid to eye health — even though age-related macular degeneration affects two-and-a-half times more people than Alzheimer’s disease, and baby boomers are as concerned about vision loss as contracting heart disease and cancer.

Christina Speck, senior director of consumer initiatives at Aetna

Successfully offering consumer-centric health care requires a multi-pronged approach that meets the needs of a wide variety of customer groups, Aetna senior director of consumer initiatives Christina Speck stressed at the recent Retail Health Summit.

By now, the retail pharmacy industry knows that its place within the American healthcare landscape is changing. PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Health Research Institute has dubbed it the New Health Economy, and in May the firm highlighted the factors that are playing a key role in pharmacy’s transformation.

VoicePort arrived in Boston for the National Association of Chain Drug Stores’ Total Store Expo this year with a new name for its suite of pharmacy technology offerings. The company rebranded its PharmaPhonetics property as CLARO Pharmacy Solutions — a name change aimed at highlighting the growth the company’s offerings have seen since starting out in 2003, according to VoicePort VP North American business development Alphonse J. Sasso.

Ateb’s recent announcement that more than a million patients were enrolled and having their medications actively managed via its Time My Meds medication synchronization platform is big news, but the company isn’t about to rest on its laurels. Rather, Ateb is looking to use what it has learned from these patients to help pharmacies improve both their business and their patients’ outcomes.

The allergy space will continue to heat up significantly in 2017 as marketers pollinate the airwaves with advertisements promoting their latest brand introductions. GSK Consumer Healthcare will have its hands full defending the Flonase franchise, now the No. 1 allergy remedy on the market. Not only is there another nasal corticosteroid on the market — McNeil Consumer’s Rhinocort launched earlier this year — but Flonase faces increasing private-label and brand competition.

According to Medline chief marketing officer Stu Schneider, it’s time for retailers and consumer health companies to start looking at the current diabetes care market like an iceberg. With more than 37% of Americans diagnosed as prediabetic, the current market for diabetes management and monitoring is really just the tip of the iceberg.