Meena Parulekar and Ajit Parulekar – Gomantak Times – Weekender, 13 June 2010

Ever noticed that OTC medication is advertised, whereas prescription drugs are not? What are OTC medicines?

It is quite common to see a customer walk into a pharmacy and ask for a medicine to relieve symptoms of pain, gastric upset, vomiting and/ or a headache. From dispensing the dose in terms of number of tablets to giving necessary instructions for use, the pharmacist does not hesitate to hand over the required medicine to the patient. What you have just witnessed is an OTC sale. In other words, a medicine has been ‘sold over the counter’.

Interestingly, the classes of drugs that constitute the OTC category of medicines are wide and varied in our country. From traditional ayurvedic products to health grooming and nutrition products for overall wellness, we have a diverse mix of OTC products available for the consumer.

Some of the common brands that are sold OTC are Crocin, Anacin, Benadryl syrup, Aspirin and D’cold tablets.

In OTC selling, there is another category of products, which have now shifted from the medicinal product category to FMHCG (Fast Moving Health Consumer Goods) category; prominent among them are brands like: Dettol, Moov, Borosoft, Itch guard, Krack and Dermicool.

WHAT IS OTC?

Essentially, for a drug to be available OTC it has to qualify certain criteria of safety. The drug in question must have an established safety profile in the recommended dose backed by sufficient data to prove its

usage in the OTC category. Secondly, it needs to be packaged and labeled in a manner so that it becomes easy for the customer to follow instructions for use.

In recent times, companies are trying hard to get their products over the counter in an effort to either rejuvenate brands or promote simple remedies that can be utilized by patients themselves to get relief from symptoms.

One of the important issues is managing communication for these types of products. As a category, medicines are different from any other consumer goods, specifically because of their constitution and intended use: and are advertised to the medical or paramedical fraternity and not to the common man.

According to the OPPI (Organization of Pharmaceutical Producers of India) code of Pharmaceutical Marketing Practice “Promotion” means any activity undertaken, organized or sponsored by a member company which is directed at healthcare professionals to promote the prescription, recommendation, supply, administration or consumption of its pharmaceutical product/s through all media including the internet.

The above implies regulation for advertising of products available on a doctors’ prescription. For over-the-counter products however, advertising is allowed as can be seen on television. This is also termed as direct to consumer advertising (DTC).

Managing the content of these advertisements becomes crucial for brand managers who handle the product. Whilst the choice of the prescription product brand is made by a doctor who is an expert (and thereby understands drugs, their main and side effects and a lot more); for an OTC product, it is the final consumer who makes the decision. This end consumer has much lower expertise and also relatively lower interest in medicines as a category. Hence, the marketer needs to advertise and promote the OTC medicine in easy to understand language. They also need to name OTC brands differently like Burnol, Krack cream; Ringguard and Itchguard unlike prescription drug brands which have chemical-based names like Bactrim, Droxy, Ceftum etc so that the consumer knows the usage of the medicine from the brand name itself. Doctors, being experts, are in the know of which brand contains which drug; but ask a consumer what drug is contained in Itchguard or Burnol, and you will be staring at a blank expression.

Another aspect which managers have to work on is the packaging, taste and smell of the OTC product (like Digene, Gelusil MPS or Strepsils which are available in orange, lemon and others flavours and colours) simply because the informed consumer is free to choose from a basket of similar OTC products.

HOW THEY ARE DISPENSED

In times where information about a medicine is readily available, managing over the counter products can be a challenging task at the retail level. According to a pharmacist Mr. Raj Vaidya who runs Hindu Pharmacy, in Panjim, Pharmacists do not have much of a problem managing stocks for OTC products. If a

product goes out of advertisements or loses its popularity or there is excess stock lying around, it can be recommended to patients over other brands provided the following norm is followed: the pharmacist must be sure of the diagnosis and whether the ailment can be treated with OTC medicines or needs to be referred to the doctor, whether any medicine is really needed in the first place. He must know what the correct medicine to recommend is and the correct dose. Also, the product must be of a standard company. In this way, one can recommend it to the customer in need rather than any brand of the similar drug.

Sometimes, the choice of offering an OTC to the customer can be influenced by schemes and margins on the product and self usage-by the pharmacist which builds confidence about the medicine and hence results in recommending the same to the patient.

Counselling for OTC products does take place, but is a difficult issue for pharmacists managing the retail setup. Effective counselling requires minimum amount of training by the companies involved and uniformity of advice provided to the customer. In a country like ours, this becomes even more important considering the level of literacy of the general population who visit the pharmacy.

There is hence lot more than what meets the eye at the counter in a retail pharmacy. Effective medicine delivery to promote health and well-being requires keeping the patient’s interest in mind while also managing the existing systems of organizations involved in healthcare delivery.

[Meena Parulekar is faculty at the Marian Institute of Healthcare Management and can be contacted at

meena.sahib@marianinstitute.in. Ajit Parulekar is faculty at the Goa Institute of Management and can be contacted at ajitp@gim.ac.in]