June Lin
Global Marketing Director, Consumer Health Softgel
Catalent
New York City, USA

Many of the innovations to existing drugs that are taking place in today’s pharmaceuticals market are driven by increasing healthcare costs and consumer demand. These modifications include new dosage forms, easier-to-swallow shapes for tablets, and the switch from prescription to over-the-counter (OTC) drugs. “Rx-to-OTC switching lies at the heart of the growth in the OTC drugs market, which has been a key growth factor for many leading brands in the US and Europe. Introducing the first OTC drug in a particular product category could considerably expand the market for that category”, says GBI Research’s report ‘The OTC Drugs Market: Commercial Trends and Rx-to-OTC Switch Prospects’, published in December 2015 (1).
Market research company Kline forecasts robust Rx-to-OTC switch activity over the next five years, with several all-new OTC categories emerging, along with many new brands entering the market in existing categories due to the increasingly favourable regulatory environment (2).
And in a study conducted among 101 pharmacists by researchers at the University of Minnesota in 2015, the most common category suggested for switching from Rx-to-OTC w ...