Q. Self-care has become a big trend among consumers. What are the trends you see as Chief Scientific Officer of the Consumer Health Division of Bayer? What is driving this trend?
David: We’ve been seeing, for some years, an increasing interest in a lot of people to take better care of themselves. You become more aware of the impact of things like smoking, watching your weight, exercise, eating the right fruits and vegetables etc. That has been bubbling along, but there’s not been a huge emphasis on real prevention of disease.
A lot has shifted in the last couple of years, so, we know that people want to take much better care of themselves. That’s totally been accelerated by COVID. I found some of the statistics here, super interesting. In COVID, 44% of people started using new devices to help manage their health proactively. About 90% of them had positive experiences, which I think, is extremely high. Over half of the people want to use more tech to communicate with their health care professionals and manage their health.
This isn’t a new statistic but the one that always gets me and continues to blow my mind is the 200 billion healthcare searches on Google, every year. Combining that increasing interest in health care and our ability to take care of our health and prevent disease with more affordable technologies, particularly, things that are already part of our day-to-day lives may just be the perfect storm for better prevention, better self-care. That’s what we’re seeing across the board.
