How to market disease-specific medical nutrition?

Increasingly, medical nutrition solutions are being developed to treat or prevent diseases like diabetes, Alzheimer's, sarcopenia, HIV and obesity. Previously, drugs have been predominantly prescribed for these conditions, with medical nutrition traditionally only used to address malnutrition. Medical nutrition is therefore not yet perceived as an obvious solution to treat or prevent diseases. Successfully marketing these products presents numerous challenges.

Learn how to face these medical marketing challenges!
We are publishing a series of articles that discuss the challenges these marketers have to face, based on our research experience on marketing medical nutrition over the last few years. Read the first three:
#1. How to create awareness of this new health product category
#2. Who to target: healthcare professionals or consumers?
#3. How to create desire amongst these very different target groups

Coming up next:
#4. How to communicate added value over drugs and functional foods
#5. How to set the right price

Disease-specific medical nutrition: A new health product category

"Disease-specific medical nutrition" can be considered as a new product category: positioned between medications available from pharmacies and drug stores on the one hand, and health foods sold in supermarkets on the other. Most health services and insurers currently don't cover the cost of these nutritional products for disease prevention or management. Consumers (patients) are therefore the final decision makers while healthcare professionals often remain strong influencers.