The “Pharma-Nutraceutical”

Changing Paradigms… Pioneering the “Pharma-Nutraceutical” revolution

Historically, the Allopathic Physician has been the exclusive and restricted domain of the high-science Pharmaceutical companies because Nutraceutical companies generally don’t know how to sell to this audience. So, while Nutraceutical science, manufacturing technology, and clinical evidence have advanced tremendously in the last decade and the space is growing exponentially, the industry has missed out on the bigger and higher-value potential for Nutritional Science being integrated into mainstream healthcare. Nutraceutical companies have missed out on the lasting brand-potential for their products by avoiding the physician audience.

PMEDS was founded to bridge the divide between the physician and the Nutraceutical world. The idea of “pharma-nutraceutical” seemed like an oxymoron in 2006; at minimum it was a complete paradigm shift. The concept was developed in a meeting between PMEDS ’s founders, Joe Fenn, a physician, who had spent 12 years in various pharmaceutical marketing and medical educational roles targeting Primary Care Physicians (PCPs), and Chuck Blitzer, who worked for Mr. Kauffman of Marion Labs and had first-hand experience with the success of Marion Laboratories. They planned to take Mr. Kauffman’s approach and combine it with a pharmaceutical-like, efficacy-based, product education on the Company’s proprietary plant-based combinations, which were given pharmaceutical-like brand names and promoted directly to the PCP, using a professional pharmaceutical sales force.

Besides the Founders’ experience in marketing to this audience, PMEDS targets PCPs because they represent the largest share of voice among MDs in USA. When pharmaceutical companies figured out a way to bring specialty products like Prozac® from the psychiatrists domain to the PCP, Lipitor® from the cardiologists domain to the PCP and even something, seemingly, complicated like insulin, Lantus® from endocrinologists to the PCP, they created the biggest blockbusters of the past twenty years.