Horizon switched up strategy for Tepezza launch, moving quickly to DTC to reach eye disease patients

Seventy-seven percent of opthalmologist offices closed during the pandemic—and that was a big problem for Horizon's then-newly approved thyroid eye disease medicine Tepezza.

So the company got creative. It built a network of more than 1,000 infusion centers, moved to digital communications with doctors and took its message directly to consumers. Although it's not typical in the drug industry to launch DTC so quickly after a drug's launch, the company needed to compensate for the office closings, Horizon Chairman and CEO Tim Walbert said in an interview during the annual J.P. Morgan healthcare conference.