Novartis has embarked “on a mission” to fight hypertension while backing its best- selling product, the blood-pressure-lowering medication Diovan, according to the drugmaker’s top financial official.
“We are on a mission in hypertension because we think there is a lot of unmet (patient) need,” said Novartis chief operating officer Alex Gorsky speaking at Bear Stearns’ annual healthcare conference in New York yesterday. “We think keeping patients on their medication is an important step.”
To help achieve its goal of “lowering America’s blood pressure,” Novartis rebranded and reformatted its Healthy BP patient education program as the BP Success Zone. The renamed program featuring a new compliance program in was launched in July.
“The results have been impressive,” Gorsky said. “We’ve (already) seen increased enrollment.”
BP Success Zone helps patients by providing medication, a free Omron blood pressure monitor with rebate, customized patient education that features lifestyle modification action plans, and a members’ Web site with blood pressure tracking tools.
The new compliance component to the program helps promote smoking cessation, a low salt diet, exercise, weight reduction and stress reduction.
Diovan is Novartis’ top-selling product with global sales in the 12 months to June 2005 topping the $1.7 billion dollar mark, according to company figures.