My concern is self-centered: I want an agnostic approach to epinephrine auto-injector delivery systems, one that leaves market entry open to newcomers with hopefully improved delivery systems and unique form factors that provide better drug stability for longer shelf life or excursions, ease of carry for people who must carry multiple doses for multiple persons or any other improvement/development I haven't covered.
In that regard I have an interest in Dey's ability to report to share owners, i.e., stock owners (of which I was probably one years ago), so that Dey is around to make branded EpiPens - which I currently prefer for the kids. I also have a vested interest in others doing as well so that I have reliable auto injector choices in epinephrine delivery.
The problem is that they're doing it wrong, like incompetently wrong. Yes, while it is theoretically true that any company can internally position a product as anything (hey, it's theory) Dey has chosen an ad campaign that concentrates on repositioning the therapeutic role of epinephrine in allergic disease management rather than their patented drug delivery system. Their brand strength is military grade technology, years on the market, proven reliability, word of mouth evangelism, and increasingly the use of EpiPen to stand in for "epinephrine auto injector" probably because it's a good name EpiPen. Easy to write, say, conveys what it is efficiently. Why this is noticeably absent I can only guess they don't want to acknowledge competitors like Shionogi.
The next issue is that it is a prescription only control usable only by the patient it was prescribed to. If Dey is not hitting the medical side HARD then they are even more incompetent than I currently believe. If the doctors don't believe in prescribing multiple EpiPens for good coverage at home, at school then what exactly do they hope to accomplish by going directly to patients who were told they don't need it. I'd say the bottleneck resides more in the doctors than the patients.
As for the blogs, Facebook groups, etc., no comment. I don't follow them. I do know that E-cue just settled with Pfizer (was it?) and I think cleared their last FDA hurdle. With our needs and our insurance I go through about 20 epinephrine auto injectors a year. Already I've started to mix up what I carry from all Dey EpiPens to include some Twinject. Part of this is form factor, Twinject is smaller even in two doses, and has an opaque carry case to block light. When the card hits the market I'm sure either myself or DH will start carrying one of those as well.