The diabetes commercial and HCP space is a little different from many others in the pharma and med device arenas.
When I was involved, DTC activity in the space was evolving.
I will never forget how highly anticipated our product was... I remember going to lunch at a famous Silicon Valley restaurant and while waiting in the foyer I had a draft copy of some of our patient marketing material.
It was created by our ad agency in NYC and I was marking it up with edits.
Three different people asked me about it, and asked me when the product was going to get approved by FDA.
During that period the company was contacted by a Hollywood production team working on the film "The Panic Room." The product concept had been written into the script and they requested a prototype.
On the day of approval, FDA contacted our VP regulatory, that person contacted the COO, and the COO called me. Then I called NYC and told them to launch our
PR campaign.
We got a calls from reps of Tommy Lasorda and Halle Berry.
The company stock shot up big time that day, and we had people coming to HQ trying to get the product, even though we weren't yet manufacturing.
Right around that time there was a lot of activity in the inhaled insulin arena and some famous players were going hard at it.
A company called Therasense had recently commercialized a new type of BGM-- they were later acquired and folks made plenty of money.
One of the areas in this category is the pediatric area-- lots of advocacy and activity.
Certified diabetes educators were amongst the key audiences with which we needed to communicate. They were advocates of the term people with diabetes.
Never used the term diabetics in any advertising or marketing materials.
On the insurance side I am sure that this chronic condition is large cost pie slice for companies like UHC and Anthem. One of my college classmates used to run the former and now runs the latter, and I am sure she can recite numbers related to this condition.
My experiences in that category were very interesting.
Insurance reimbursement... complex topic.