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IMS Health Inc.
1499
Post Road
Fairfield, Connecticut 06824
(203) 319-4700
www.imshealth.com
Sales
$1.4
billion
Business Description
IMS
is a leading global provider of information solutions to the pharmaceutical
and healthcare industries. IMS's revenues are derived primarily from the
sale of a broad line of market information, sales management and consulting
services to the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries. IMS's information
products are developed to meet client needs by using data secured from a
worldwide network of suppliers in the markets where operations exist. Key
information products include sales management information to optimize sales
force productivity and marketing effectiveness research for prescription and
over-the-counter pharmaceutical products. Consulting services use in-house
capabilities and methodologies to assist pharmaceutical clients in analyzing
and evaluating market trends, strategies and tactics, and to help in the
development and implementation of customized software applications and data
warehouse tools. IMS operates in more than 100 countries. IMS also owns a
venture capital unit, Enterprise Associates, LLC ("Enterprises"), which is
focused on investments in emerging businesses.
IMS
IMS provides sales management and market research information services to
the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries worldwide. IMS provides
information services covering more than 100 countries and maintains offices
in 76 countries on six continents, with approximately 61% of total 2003 IMS
revenue generated outside the United States.
IMS Services
Sales management services represented approximately 60% of IMS's worldwide
revenue in 2003. Sales management services include sales territory reports,
prescription tracking reports and self-medication services. Sales management
services are used principally by pharmaceutical manufacturers to measure and
forecast the effectiveness and efficiency of sales representatives and to
target the marketing and sales efforts of a client's sales force. They are
also used by customers to compensate pharmaceutical sales forces. Sales
management services are made available to clients and their sales
representatives and management via hardcopy reports, CD-ROMs, software
application tools, computer on-line services, web-based access and magnetic
media for use in client computer systems and IMS's customized electronic
workstations. IMS's data delivery systems help clients to maximize
efficiency by aiding in the setting of sales targets and calculation of
sales commissions; giving fast access to sales data and permitting more
sophisticated analyses; improving call reporting; and improving
communication between sales management and their sales forces. In the United
States, IMS has several customized client decision support systems that
allow a client to store large amounts of data at its own site and integrate
its own internal sales and marketing data with IMS data and other external
data. IMS's principal sales management services are as follows:
• Sales Territory Reporting Services. Sales territory reporting is the
principal sales management service offered by IMS to its pharmaceutical
clients. Sales territory reports can be precisely tailored for each client,
and measure the sales of a client's own products and those of competitors
within specified geographical configurations. These reports are designed to
provide marketing and sales managers with a reliable measurement of each
salesperson's activity and effectiveness in his or her sales territory.
Sales Insight™, a web-based platform, enables decision makers easy and
immediate measurement of activity by integrating unique sets of IMS
customer-level prescription and sales intelligence, along with the client's
proprietary segmentation, call plan, promotional activity and territory
sales goals. IMS's sales territory reporting services cover more than 50
countries and are used by IMS customers for applications such as sales-force
compensation, resource allocation, territory alignment, market analyses and
distribution management. Reports are available to clients with a variety of
frequencies such as: on a weekly, monthly and quarterly basis. In the United
States, sales territory reports from IMS's DDD™ service allow pharmaceutical
clients to track the flow of sales for their products and those of their
competitors to various levels of geography and channels of distribution. The
DDD database contains data on sales of pharmaceutical products through all
distribution channels, including direct sales by pharmaceutical
manufacturers and indirect sales through drug wholesalers, mail service
distributors, warehousing chains and other specialty distributors.
• Prescription Tracking Reporting Services. Prescription tracking reporting
services are designed to monitor prescription activity and to track the
movement of pharmaceutical products out of retail channels. Prescription
tracking services are used by pharmaceutical companies to facilitate product
marketing at the prescriber level. In the United States, the Xponent®
service monitors prescription activity from retail pharmacies, long-term
care and mail service pharmacies using a patented statistical methodology to
project the prescription activity of nearly 1.3 million individual
prescribers on a monthly basis. Xponent is available in over five European
countries. The European Xponent database is built from prescription data
collected from retail pharmacies and coding centers which are linked to the
geographical area in which the prescription was written. IMS also offers
EarlyView™, a sales optimization solution, providing weekly prescriber level
activity, prescribing and competitive trends and alerts for client's key
prescribers directly to clients' sales representatives electronically.
• Consumer Health. IMS Customer Health services provide detailed product
movement, market share and pricing information for over-the-counter,
personal care, patient care and nutritional products. IMS publishes reports
on the global consumer health market, with audited information covering 26
countries, and provides related services. PharmaTrend, IMS's tracking
service for over-the-counter pharmaceutical products purchased by consumers,
is available in 12 European countries.
Market research services represented approximately 36% of IMS's worldwide
revenue in 2003. The principal market research services are multinational
integrated analytical tools, and syndicated pharmaceutical, medical,
hospital, promotional and prescription audits. Market research services are
utilized by clients for various strategic purposes, including analyzing
market shares, therapeutic prescribing trends and price movements at the
national and sub-national levels. The information reported in these services
is generated or derived from data collected primarily from pharmaceutical
manufacturers, pharmaceutical wholesalers, pharmacies, hospitals and
doctors. Market research services are delivered to clients via hardcopy
reports, CD-ROMs, software application tools, computer on-line services, and
magnetic media for use in client computer systems and IMS's customized
electronic workstations. IMS's principal market research services are as
follows:
• Pharmaceutical Audits. These audits measure the sale of pharmaceutical
products into pharmacies, supplemented in some countries by data collected
from prescribing physicians, retail chains and discount stores. These audits
contain data projected to national estimates, showing product sales by
therapeutic class broken down by package size and dosage form. IMS publishes
pharmaceutical audits covering 77 countries.
• Medical Audits. These audits are based on information collected from
panels of practicing physicians and contain projected national estimates of
the number of consultations for each diagnosed disease with details of the
therapy prescribed. These audits also analyze the use physicians make of
individual drugs by listing the diseases for which they are prescribed, the
potential therapeutic action the physician is expecting, other drugs
prescribed at the same time, and estimates of the total number of drugs used
for each disease. IMS publishes medical audits covering 45 countries.
• Hospital Audits. These audits contain data projected to national and
regional estimates and show the sale of pharmaceutical products to hospitals
by therapeutic class. Related reports provide audits of laboratory
diagnostic supplies, hospital supplies and hospital records. IMS publishes
hospital audits covering 47 countries.
• Promotional Audits. These audits measure pharmaceutical promotion for a
particular market, including sales-force promotion and journal and mail
advertising, based on information received from panels of physicians and
from monitoring medical journals and direct mail. IMS publishes promotional
audit reports covering 22 countries.
• Prescription Audits. These audits analyze the rate at which drugs move out
of the pharmacy and into the hands of the consumer, and measure both what is
prescribed by physicians and what is actually dispensed at the pharmacy. IMS
publishes prescription audits covering 17 countries.
• MIDAS® Services. MIDAS is an on-line multinational integrated data
analysis tool that harnesses IMS's worldwide databases and is used by the
pharmaceutical industry to assess and utilize pharmaceutical information and
trends in multiple markets. MIDAS gives clients on-line access to IMS
compiled pharmaceutical, medical, promotional and chemical data. Using
MIDAS, clients are able to view information from the national databases
compiled by IMS and produce statistical reports in the format required by
the client. MIDAS is available in more than 70 countries.
• Other Market Research Reports. These include managed care reports, which
offer an array of information to quantify the effects of managed care on the
pharmaceutical and healthcare industry; Market Research Publications
including the Pharmaceutical World Review™; personal care reports, which
measure the sale of healthcare accessories, wound care and dietetic aids;
and reports on bulk chemical shipments and molecules for R&D. IMS has
developed, in certain countries, disease and treatment information at the
patient level (in which information is not identifiable at the individual
patient level) that gives participants in the healthcare industry new
insights into the treatment of diseases. The availability, scope and
frequency of the foregoing reports vary on a country-by-country basis.
The remaining 4% of IMS's 2003 revenue was derived primarily through
professional consulting and services. IMS provides pharmaceutical and other
clients with a range of value-added services that are used to study specific
issues and trends in the pharmaceutical marketplace and the healthcare
industry.
IMS Data Suppliers
Over the past five decades, IMS generally has developed and maintained
strong relationships with its data suppliers in each market in which it
operates. IMS has historical connections with many of the relevant trade
associations and professional associations, including for example, in the
United States, where it has been designated as a database licensee by the
American Medical Association ("AMA") for use and sublicensing of the AMA's
physician database. As the supply of pharmaceutical data is critical to
IMS's business, IMS devotes significant human and financial resources to its
data collection efforts. For more than a year, IMS has had to address
adverse data supply issues with respect to two products in Japan.
IMS Customers
Sales to the pharmaceutical industry accounted for substantially all of
IMS's revenue in 2003. All major pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies
are customers of IMS, and many of the companies subscribe to reports and
services in several countries. IMS's customer base is broad in scope and
enables it to avoid dependence on any single customer. None of IMS's
customers accounted for more than 10% of the Company's gross revenues in
2003, 2002 or 2001.
IMS Competition
While no competitor provides the geographical reach or breadth of IMS's
services, IMS generally competes in the countries in which it operates with
other information services companies, as well as the in-house capabilities
of its customers. Generally, competition has arisen on a country-by-country
basis. In Europe, certain of IMS's services compete with those offered by
competitors such as Taylor Nelson in the United Kingdom, Cegedim in France,
Germany and the United Kingdom, and NDCHealth Corporation in Germany and the
United Kingdom. In the United States, certain of IMS's sales management
services, including its sales territory and prescription tracking reports,
compete with the offerings of various companies, particularly NDCHealth
Corporation. Also, various companies compete with IMS in the United States
with respect to IMS's market research services. Service, quality, coverage
and speed of delivery of information services and products are the principal
differentiators in IMS's markets.
Information Services
Companies in the Directory
IMS Health
Market Research Companies - Category Directory
Information Services - Category Directory
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