SECO 2025 preview: Orasis Shark Tank-style event and Qlosi launch
Paul Smith, president and chief operating officer of Orasis Pharmaceuticals, previews the SECO 2025 Meeting with Optometry 360, detailing exciting endeavors the company is focused on.
Question:
SECO is coming up. Orasis is hosting a Shark Tank-style event where speakers will pitch reasoning for prescribing Qlosi to a particular patient and the audience gets to vote. What can attendees expect from this event?
Paul Smith:
Well, it’s really an exciting time, and I think you’ve highlighted the format well. There’s this massive unmet need that I think providers generally agree on about presbyopia patients who are seeking alternatives. But one of the most common questions we get from providers is, “Where do I start? Who are the patients that are most likely to benefit from a presbyopia drop like Qlosi?” We’ve very excited to be the next to launch in the category.
As part of this event, there’ll be really interactive discussion, dialogue among the faculty, as well as some audience participation where each of the faculty participants will talk through some of the specific patient profiles, use cases, really general archetypes for the patients who are most motivated, really to engage in this category, seek out an alternative to reading glasses like Qlosi, and then what it looks like to enter them into an ongoing continuum of care.
Question:
Does Orasis have any other things planned for SECO?
Paul Smith:
We do. This is an important meeting for us, as you may have seen, and as your readers may have gathered here in recent weeks from our press releases and just activity online on our social channels. We’re really in full launch mode at the moment. This is a really important meeting, as I mentioned, because it is one of the large optometric educational meetings of the year, and we certainly see our partnership with optometry as fundamental to the success of this launch.
During the course of the meeting, we’ll be engaging with thought leaders, peer educators. There’ll be a range of activities from speaker training to video content, really all culminating in that Friday night activity of the Qlosi Shark Tank experience. This will be a quite active meeting for us, a really important one as we really kick off in earnest 2025 and really shift into high gear with our launch.
Question:
Can you give us an update on Qlosi, including its launch, availability, and how it will help patients with presbyopia?
Paul Smith:
Yeah, absolutely. We’ve been hard at work these last several months, really building the team, scaling the organization to prepare for this launch. We’ll be onboarding our full field sales team during the month of March, and we’ll be in a position to go into the field really at full commercial scale at the end of the month. What doctors can expect is they’ll begin seeing or assist reps in the field, visiting with them, speaking about this great opportunity that now exists to provide patients an alternative.
We’ll also be increasingly active on social and various peer education channels, medical education, many of which we’ve already been engaged with, as well as engagement with the trade media, like yourself, to make sure that the message is getting out there, the education is being well-disseminated, and we’re laying the right foundation for the future of this important category.
Question:
What future plans does Orasis have for the eye care industry?
Paul Smith:
Well, we’re thinking big, but our focus is entirely on getting the launch of Qlosi right here in the next several weeks. It really is a massive opportunity. It really is a unique opportunity to partner with providers and delight patients. While we certainly have long-term aspirations to find new and expanded ways to serve the eye care community, our focus today is first and foremost launching Qlosi into this market and finding a new way to serve these presbyopia patients.
