Q&A: Rhinomed’s efforts to help consumers breathe easy

Drug Store News: What is Rhinomed’s mission?  
John Ende: Rhinomed’s patented nasal technology leverages the physiology of the nose to optimize your breathing, which is essential to restful sleep and to maintaining good health.

Put briefly, Rhinomed makes nasal breathing easy. In sport, that one extra breath can take you further, longer, faster. At night, breathing better means sleeping better. Sleep, along with nutrition and exercise, is essential to feeling good and staying healthy.

DSN: What makes the Mute snoring device unique as a retail offering? 
JE: Rhinomed just completed an online survey by The Harris Poll, which found that 66% of U.S. adults say someone in their household snores. Sixty-nine percent of people whose partners snore wish there was a simple solution. Additionally, 57% admit nudging and shoving their partner in the middle of the night, 44% sleep in a different room and 8% report getting into a fight in the middle of the night. And over a third of snorers without a partner say they would lie about their snoring on a dating app. Snoring is a huge problem in America, yet very few retailers actually have a snoring section. Snoring is treated as an afterthought. We see how desperately sufferers are searching for solutions online, and we are working to help retailers deliver solutions in their stores. 

Mute sits comfortably inside the nose, increasing airflow and improving breathing. From a product user trial, we confirmed that 78% of users could breathe better at night, 75% of users snored less and 73% of partners reported a reduction in snoring severity. And in a test program with a major U.S. retailer, 80% of Mute sales were from new customers to the category.  

[Related Content: Breathing easy: Rhinomed’s Duncan highlights sales]

Amazon labels their sleep category “Sleep & Snoring,” and Mute has a strong and thriving business there. At Rhinomed, we’re passionate about helping people get off the couch and into their own beds again, and a big part of delivering on that is by helping retailers understand how to properly develop and expand the snoring category.

DSN: Beyond OTC products, Rhinomed is making inroads in diagnostics. Can you tell us about Rhinoswab and its benefits compared with standard nasal swabs?  
JE: Rhinoswab by Rhinomed is a comfortable and easy to use self-collection nasal swab that is ideal for both supervised mass testing and at home self-collection. A recent user experience study compared Rhinoswab to a combined nose and throat swab, finding that Rhinoswab:

• Is the swab preferred by 89% of participants in the study; 
• Is more comfortable: 98% of participants reported no discomfort with Rhinoswab versus 70% of participants who thought the nose and throat swab was uncomfortable or very uncomfortable; and
• Is easy to use: 98% of users needed little or no guidance when using Rhinoswab, and 95% found it very easy or easy to use. 

Rhinoswab’s ergonomic design and dual swab heads also provide benefits over other nasal swabs, including greater standardization, ensuring a user-friendly, error-free sample collection process, and higher yield, providing a 1.57 times greater sample size when compared with the Copan ESwab when worn for one minute in the nose. 

DSN: What does the future hold for RhinoMed and the respiratory health space? 
JE: Rhinomed’s vision for the future is to enable medications to be administered through the nose with the aim of improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the therapies while seeking a reduction in side effects for patients.

Rhinomed continues to invest in furthering our knowledge of the roles the nose, the upper airways and the olfactory system play in maintaining health and wellness.