Jacqueline Henderson, president for EMEA at Johnson & Johnson Vision
Although it is only 16 months since Optician last sat down with Jacqueline Henderson, there’s a great deal to talk about.
Earlier this year, Henderson took over as president for Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) at Johnson & Johnson Vision (J&J), so she now oversees the surgical side of the business within the region in addition to the contact lens division.
‘The last few months have passed very quickly,’ says Henderson. ‘During that time, my role has expanded to encompass Surgical Vision as well as Vision Care, which has been both exciting and an honour in equal measure.
We are shaping the way we can support our patients as one integrated organisation, using our collective expertise and innovation to allow us to move in the same direction. That gitves us so much more opportunity to meet patient needs with agility and solutions, where they are needed most.’
Originally from Canada, Henderson spent 27 years in various leadership positions at J&J, including working within the contact lens part of the business for seven years before her latest role. She has been based in Dublin, Ireland since May, 2022.
‘I’m thrilled to be in the EMEA region,’ she says. ‘The team and the customers have been so welcoming. From a business perspective, there continues to be a tonne of opportunity and we’ve been very fortunate to have such a wonderful partnership with our customers to serve patients.
'We still have a lot of work to do, whether that’s within J&J, or even as an industry, around some of the big patient needs, such as myopia. We are here to make sure that we’re taking care of patients’ eyesight, which is the sense that people fear losing the most. So, we have a big responsibility to do that and I’m really looking forward to what’s ahead.’
The EMEA region is a huge and varied area to cover for a business, but Henderson feels there is much to be learnt from the plethora of approaches to eye care it contains.
‘In terms of my impressions of EMEA, it is clearly a very diverse region,’ says Henderson. ‘The fact that there’s different healthcare systems, there’s different regulatory environments, market-to-market, is a big strength of this region.
'This is because it allows you to test and learn, and potentially adopt new models from one or the other, all while also taking learnings from the surgical side too. Overall, I would say EMEA is diverse and complex, but with that comes a lot of opportunities. It is an exciting market to work in.’
Patients at the centre
During our discussion, Henderson notably makes several references to her excitement with her role, and this excitement invariably has its origins in her laser-like focus on improving patients’ eye health and sight.
‘When we think about our eye care professionals (ECPs), we consider the ophthalmologists, opticians and optometrists. They take care of the eye health of patients for their whole life and, I think, have a seamless outlook on how they’re taking care of patients. Really the whole thing is just about the patients and their eyes; their eye health and their vision.
‘Sometimes, in the past, we’ve seen companies set up a little bit more around the products than around the patient. I think, for us at J&J, what we’re trying to do right now is put the patient at the centre, put the customer at the centre, and concentrate on how we can best serve them over their whole lives. At the end of the day, its healthy sight and healthy eyes that we are all trying to achieve.’
Henderson makes the salient point that patients just want to be treated and are less aware than people working within eye care provision as to the boundaries between optometry, ophthalmology and dispensing roles.
‘Talking, as we were, about the diversity of EMEA, the various countries’ structure their healthcare and eye care in different ways,’ she says. ‘If you look at some places in the Middle East, for example, there are eye health clinics that are doing everything from spectacles to cataract surgery all under one roof. You go into the waiting room, and you see children, parents, grandparents, all getting served together in the same place.
'That’s an example of what I would call end-to-end eye health. I think that approach is interesting, and it is what doctors have been doing in many places for a very long time. So, it’s about us trying to match that in terms of how we serve the patient.’
Keeping in contacts
When the conversation moves on to the subject of contact lenses, Henderson outlines that there is a lot of opportunity for increased market penetration due to large numbers of people with uncorrected vision, and many people interested in wearing contact lenses but not in them yet.
‘First and foremost for us, is how do we work with our customers on some of our media programmes to make sure that we’re improving access and care for patients so that they can indeed get into contact lenses if they’re interested, and then stay in them,’ says Henderson. ‘This could be achieved through digital innovation, business model innovation, or in how we communicate.
‘The other challenge is always making sure that we have best-in-class products. We’ve got a long, long heritage of Acuvue being the first to break new ground in all sorts of ways. I think sometimes we forget about some of the things that have made Acuvue the worldwide leader it is.
'It is largely down to what I will call our eye-inspired design, which informs some of the core tenets of how we design our contact lenses going right back to the beginning and all the way up to our Max family, which I call besting our best.’
Research and development of a new contact lens takes multiple years and, therefore, involves a degree of futurology as companies look to predict the needs of patients in five or 10 years time. Asked about how J&J approach this challenge, Henderson says it starts with assessing where patients are not having their needs fully covered by existing products.
‘We try to understand what the patient need gaps are,’ says Henderson. ‘That can be an emerging health concern, a symptom, or even a need that is not even known to patients. For example, way back, no patient would have thought that they needed to protect their eyes with UVA and UVB blocking. But once the science told us that is the healthiest thing to do, it was a matter of incorporating that into our design.
‘Our eye-inspired design starts with the patient needs, and we uncover those through having conversations with patients and the ECPs serving them. Once we have really established the need, then the project goes to the design area. That can be a materials design in terms of the polymers or packaging, it can be a whole bunch of different things.
'Then it can take some time to develop production processes, and then figuring out how to scale them up with quality and consistency. There is a tonne of innovation and technology in our manufacturing that allows for that high quality consistency.’
Henderson notes it can sound like a simple progression when talked about, but this belies the complexity of the process.
‘I have to say, whether it’s contact lenses or, as I’ve had a lot more exposure to recently, our intraocular lenses, I’m constantly amazed at the process by which these products are made ready to help patients,’ she says. ‘The amount of technology, science and expertise in these teeny tiny things is quite staggering.’
Staying on trend
Asked to identify trends in contact lens prescribing, Henderson mentions the need to increase contact lens fitting capacity.
‘Varying across different markets, there was some fitting capacity challenges in terms of backlogs coming out of Covid-19, and you see this throughout healthcare,’ says Henderson. ‘It feels like for the most part people are back to normal in terms of being able to manage that capacity.
'There are still some opportunities to figure out how we continue to increase fitting capacity because there’s still quite a big bucket of patients that are interested but not necessarily getting into contact lenses.’
Henderson notes that myopia continues to be an interesting space with the huge, and growing, worldwide need for myopia management.
‘With myopia the patient needs to be managed differently than a standard contact lens fitting,’ she says. ‘So, when I think about future trends or trends that are emerging in prescribing, myopia will require interesting partnerships between ourselves, our customers and ECPs to figure out if our business model is set up to care for these patients in the right way.
'We need to develop some business model innovations, be able to serve the needs of patients, and make sure we are elevating the standard of care within myopia. There is more to come on our portfolio in this area.’
The final trend that Henderson discusses relates to the ageing population in the UK and throughout Europe driving demand for presbyopia contact lenses.
‘This category is growing at nearly three times the rate of the contact lens category overall,’ says Henderson. ‘Of course, this has to do with the ageing population, but at the same time it has to do with new and innovative products that are available and making a big difference to patients.
'Acuvue Oasys Max 1-Day Multifocal is a wonderful example of this. We hear some fantastic feedback from our ECPs in terms of the ease of fitting and the fact that patients know that there are contact lenses for presbyopia, and they have the option of not wearing glasses.’