The Switch: How Maxwellia liberated ‘the pill’

Alderley-Park based Maxwellia has enabled women to take their contraception into their own hands.

Through the launch of Lovima®, a safe and effective progestogen-only pill available over-the-counter, what was once a timely process has now become as simple as visiting your local pharmacy. With women struggling to access GP appointments and contraceptive services, and waiting lists for long-acting contraception to be fitted at about six to eight weeks, this transformative work has bridged a much-needed gap for women’s healthcare.

An introduction to Maxwellia

Based at Bruntwood SciTech’s world-leading life science and tech campus Alderley Park, Cheshire, Maxwellia was developed with the aim to ‘build and commercialise a pipeline of new consumer healthcare brands to empower people to self-care more effectively’. As a pharmaceutical company, they identify prescription products that meet an unmet healthcare need in society and make them available to buy in pharmacies by switching them to over the counter use. 

Founded by Anna Maxwell, the company prides itself on being a ‘hub of switching expertise’ and has already successfully made many well-known brands available to buy in pharmacies that were once only accessible by seeing a doctor and getting a prescription.

Bringing Lovima® to market

CEO Anna Maxwell has spoken publicly about how proactively clinicians were recommending the switch to enable customers to purchase the contraceptive pill without a doctor or nurses visit. One of the biggest barriers they faced while working with the MHRA was ensuring that the risk and benefits of taking the contraceptive pill were managed and communicated efficiently to the people purchasing the product by the pharmacists.

As a business, Maxwellia prides itself on providing an end-to-end service: from product ideation through to providing the comprehensive training needed to the pharmacists to enable their customers to make a safe and well-informed choice. With Lovima®, this meant agreeing a pharmacy supply protocol with the MHRA and going the extra mile by ensuring it even fit on the back of a pack; resulting in the conceptualisation of their ‘active pack’.

Women opting to obtain their contraceptive pill over the counter will be required to pay, but providing them with this alternative option provides women with the power of choice: finding the most convenient option to suit their individual lifestyles. As a result, Maxwellia’s Lovima® is successfully ‘helping to create milestone moments for women’; putting them back in charge of their contraception with an easy to access and convenient solution.

What’s next?

Having recently secured features in high profile life sciences publications across the industry and editorials in magazines such as Cosmopolitan, as well as receiving £5m in funding to support the launch of Lovima® by Channel 4 Ventures last year, we believe that this is only the beginning for Maxwellia - and we look forward to seeing their progression first-hand from our dedicated life sciences campus at Alderley Park. 

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