IHAS register in the UK – will it help reduce bad practice?

As you may know, the UK government has recently launched a regulation authority for Botox and non-surgical treatments called IHAS. This is supported by a website.

This scheme is supported by the government and is a voluntary scheme in which clinics can register with the IHAS organisation and are then regularly assessed and audited.

Whilst we think regulation is certainly necessary in the industry, our main concern with the IHAS is that it is voluntary. This means that some clinics will register and others will not, and there is no need for any clinic to register.

The paperwork required to register is very extensive and time consuming, and there is a significant cost to a clinic to register. The government budget for publicising the IHAS scheme is relatively small compared and we are by no means sure that it is sufficient to adequately publicise the scheme to the general public.

Our concerns are therefore that the scheme is (1) time consuming and costly; (2) voluntary; and (3) may not be publicised well enough to the general public to gain general acceptance.

We hope we are wrong in our concerns. Only time will tell whether the IHAS regulation scheme will be an effective way of policing the Botox and Dermal Filler market in the United Kingdom.