Digital Technologies

Amulet announces $5.8 million in series A financing led by HealthX Ventures along with Incite Ventures, AllerFund, Mendota Venture Capital and Great Oaks Venture Capital. Allergy Amulet is for on-the-go testing of food to determine whether allergens are present.

HBW Insight presents a new series profiling regulatory affairs specialists working in or supporting the consumer health and cosmetics industries. In this first installment, we speak to AESGP's Christelle Anquez-Traxler and Oliver Hartmann, senior regulatory science & strategy lead, and regulatory & legal affairs director respectively. 

Bioniq's latest “oversubscribed” funding round will finance the global expansion of its AI-powered personalized supplement offer, the firm says.

Study with 509 subjects conducted in Petros’ preparation of OTC switch application demonstrated 90.6% correct self-selection for participants using its web app technology and DFL and 57.3% correct by subjects using only DFL.

Draft guidance will offer a risk-based framework for accessing the credibility of AI and help ensure that AI models used to answer regulatory questions are sufficiently credible for a particular ‘context of use,’ CDER’s Tala Fakhouri says.

Aspirin is celebrating its 125th 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.

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.

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.

Bezos Earth Fund, founded with $10b in 2020 by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, makes five-year grant to launch Bezos Center for Sustainable Protein at North Carolina State University in Raleigh.

“To be the leader in beauty today, you must be the leader of Beauty Tech,” says Barbara Lavernos, L’Oréal’s deputy chief executive officer in charge of research, innovation and technology. The VivaTech 2024 conference in Paris provided opportunity for L’Oreal to showcase its latest innovations and discuss beauty’s AI-enabled future.