The OTC industry needs a major rethink if it is to meet the needs of the general public, delegates at this year’s SMART conference were told.

Despite pushing people towards self-medication and self-care, OTC sales over the last decade have been flat, prescription volumes have grown and there has been an increase in the visits to accident and emergency departments, pointed out Tim Brooks.

The founder of growth and strategy consultancy Muzeable and former head of marketing at GlaxoSmithKline described the state of the OTC market as “disappointing”, particularly given the growth in public awareness of health and wellness.

Mr Brooks explained that, in order to try and understand the current state of affairs, he had been granted access to shopper and consumer data by nearly all the members of the Proprietary Association of Great Britain (PAGB), the trade body for OTC medicines’ manufacturers.

His conclusion was that the issue was behavioural, rather than educational, and the industry was guilty of unintentionally putting up barriers to people taking more ownership of their health, despite the economic imperative – for the NHS and society as a whole – for them to do so.

Shopper insight important

However the problem is not insurmountable, Mr Brooks declared to attendees at last month’s event. The rise in shopper insight work that has taken place over the last decade plus the emergence of behaviour economics – the study of how people decide how to spend money – offered a way to address the issues at stake, he explained, although he warned delegates, “we need radical solutions to what we do and how we do it”.

“If we put people and their real behaviour at the heart of OTC medicines, we can deliver a more effective self-medication market,” pronounced Mr Brooks. That meant moving away from the current structures within which OTC medicines are sold, as these had been designed for pharmacists and not customers, and creating an environment of empowerment rather than paternalism, he said.

In a world in which people are short of time, densely merchandised OTC medicines fixtures were considered “unpenetrable” and the huge amount of text on the packaging of OTC medicines was frequently a cause of frustration.

“People feel that shopping for OTC medicines is too difficult,” said Mr Brooks. All too often this led to shoppers leaving pharmacies empty handed and seeking help elsewhere, such as from their GP or A&E. “We are not doing enough to help people shop OTC medicines,” he said.

Product packaging was one of the areas highlighted by Mr Brooks as needing urgent overhaul. “At the moment it is designed for healthcare professionals and prioritises technical information that people don’t use and can’t understand,” he said.

Mr Brooks proposed refining packaging so the front only included information that met the needs of shoppers in terms of navigating the OTC fixture and identifying whether the product did what they wanted it to do. He suggested putting details such as ingredients and dosage on the sides and back of the pack.

Doing this in a consistent way across all OTC product was “a simple but far-reaching change”.

Regulatory issues

Delegates questioned whether these recommendations would work given the current regulatory framework around OTC product packaging. Mr Brooks conceded that fundamental changes to packaging wouldn’t happen overnight but added: “Everyone in the industry is open to thinking about what to do. There is acceptance that we need to do something.”

However he urged the MHRA to be open to considering industry data such as shopper insight research as part of its processes. OTC manufacturers and trade bodies also had to play their part. “There has to be a model of collecting data that is robust and validated. Collaboration is vital.”

SMART backgrounder

The SMART conference, organised by Pharmacy Magazine, the Proprietary Association of Great Britain and Pharmacy Voice, took place in February at Birmingham’s Hilton Metropole. Pharmacy organisations including the Royal Pharmaceutical Society and National Pharmacy Association, independent and multiple pharmacy groups, OTC medicines manufacturers, industry experts and pharmacists were among those in attendance.