Co-promotions, awareness help charge up diagnostics

Diagnostics ought to be a can’t-miss category, especially for pharmacy retailers, given the rush of baby boomers going into their sixties and accumulating membership into a pair of not-too-exclusive clubs—those with diabetes and those with hypertension. And while both diabetes and hypertension are more often associated with card-carrying members of the AARP, the fact of the matter is that the average age where either disease-state is first diagnosed is falling.

So, more older people at higher risk for these two disease states, coupled with the fact that more patients are being first diagnosed at a younger age, should spell success, right? Not necessarily.

Sales of blood glucose meters and supplies and of blood pressure monitors totaled $407.5 million across food, drug and mass outlets (minus Walmart) for the 52 weeks ended Aug. 9, according to Information Resources Inc. data, representing an 8.1% drop in sales. Outside of that, sales of blood pressure monitors are still very much on the upswing—$101.7 million in sales on growth of 22.7%.

The drop in diabetes sales, at least according to one supplier, is indicative of the commoditization of the category. Substantial points of differentiation of just a few years ago—alternate-site testing, smaller testing samples, no-coding and faster test results—are all costs of entry into the category today. And while the wireless tracking and tracing of a disease state through a patient’s online health home may represent future points of differentiation, that future still is a few years away, according to more than one industry executive.

To help recharge sales of such home diagnostics as blood-glucose meters, such companies as Home Diagnostics Inc. and Homedics have been partnering to help co-promote the diagnostics category and establish a synergy in the consumer’s mind. “[As much as] 70% of patients with diabetes have hypertension,” said Gregg Johnson, VP consumer healthcare at HDI. The reverse correlation is not as prevalent, Johnson said, though both disease states are linked to being overweight, which describes about 2-in-every-3 Americans.

And while partnering around joint marketing initiatives—point-of-purchase displays, cross-couponing and joint FSIs—to reach that coveted patient who’s been diagnosed with both diabetes and hypertension is one objective, raising awareness around the two disease states beyond shelf-adjacencies is another. “It’s almost like toothbrushes and toothpaste,” Johnson said; you buy one, and you probably ought to be buying the other.