Profile: IMS Health Inc (RX.N)

IMS Health Incorporated (IMS), incorporated in 1998, is a provider of market intelligence to the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries. IMS offers market intelligence products and services, including portfolio optimization capabilities; commercial effectiveness innovations; managed care and consumer health offerings, and consulting and services solutions. The Company’s information products are developed to meet the clients' needs by using data secured from a worldwide network of suppliers in more than 100 countries. Its key information products include sales force effectiveness to optimize sales force productivity and territory management, portfolio optimization to provide clients with insights into market measurement and opportunity assessment and launch, brand management and other to support client needs relative to market segmentation and positioning, life cycle management for prescription and consumer health pharmaceutical products, and health economics and outcomes research offerings. During the year ended December 31, 2008, the Company acquired Robinson and James Research Pty Limited, Fourth Hurdle Consulting Limited, Health Benchmarks, Inc., RMBC Pharma Limited, and Skura Corporation, Inc.

Sales Force Effectiveness Offerings

During the year ended December 31, 2008, the Company’s Sales Force Effectiveness Offerings represented approximately 45% of its worldwide revenue. Sales Force Effectiveness Offerings provide its clients with insight, as to which physicians are seeing significant numbers of patients that are likely to benefit from a specific therapy. These solutions facilitate the optimization of market share and revenue potential using sub-national prescription patterns, easy-to-use access tools, and an array of consulting services. The Company’s Sales Force Effectiveness Offerings provide the in-depth information, market intelligence and analysis that enhance the allocation of resources.

Sales territory reporting is the principal sales management service that it offers to its pharmaceutical clients. These reports are designed to provide marketing and sales managers with a measurement of each salesperson's activity and effectiveness in his or her sales territory. IMS’s sales territory reporting services cover more than 31 countries and are used by its customers for applications, such as sales-force compensation, resource allocation, territory alignment, market analyses and distribution management. It makes reports available to clients in a variety of frequencies, such as on a weekly, monthly and quarterly basis.

The Company’s 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, its Xponent service monitors prescription activity from retail pharmacies, long-term care and mail service pharmacies using a methodology to project the prescription activity of nearly 1.4 million individual prescribers on a weekly and monthly basis. Xponent is available in six 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 Early View, a sales optimization solution, providing weekly prescriber level activity, highlighting prescribing trends for clients' key prescribers directly to clients' sales representatives electronically.

IMS’s Sales and Account Management practice focuses on helping customers assess the effectiveness of their sales strategies and better design and deploy their sales forces. The Company’s Information Management practice helps clients organize, integrate, warehouse and analyze valuable data assets from multiple sources. It also provides Client Services within this business line. Along with product set-up, installation and implementation, Client Services provides customer training and a variety of ongoing, post-sales services.

Portfolio Optimization Offerings

In 2008, portfolio optimization offerings represented approximately 28% of the Company’s worldwide revenue. IMS Portfolio Optimization provides customers with the intelligence and tools to identify and optimize pharmaceutical product portfolios, including marketed products and the new product pipeline. Providing a range of offerings, Portfolio Optimization enables customers to evaluate, assess, understand, and implement strategies and tactics to improve bottom-line performance and set the course for the future. Integrating prescriptions, sales, disease/treatment, and industry intelligence, Portfolio Optimization services provide a picture of the worldwide market. From a national viewpoint down to regional and local level data, customers can complete a thorough market analysis, exploring all options to set the pace for brand leadership.

The Company’s pharmaceutical audits measure the sale of pharmaceutical products into pharmacies, supplemented in some countries by data collected from dispensing 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. It publishes pharmaceutical audits covering approximately 80 countries. Its medical audits are based on information collected from panels of practicing office-based 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. It publishes medical audits covering over 40 countries.

IMS’s hospital 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. It publishes hospital audits covering approximately 50 countries. Its prescription audits contain projected national estimates, of 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. It publishes prescription audits covering approximately 10 countries. The Company’s MIDAS service is an online multinational integrated data analysis tool that harnesses its worldwide databases and is used by the pharmaceutical industry to assess and utilize global pharmaceutical information and trends in multiple markets. Its MIDAS Quantum offering gives clients on-line access to pharmaceutical, medical, promotional and chemical data that it compiles. Using MIDAS Quantum, IMS’s clients are able to view information from the national databases compiled by it and produces reports in the format required by the client. MIDAS contains information covering more than 70 countries.

Other Portfolio Optimization Reports include market research publications including the Pharmaceutical World Review, personal care reports, which estimate the sale of medical surgical device product purchases and reports on bulk chemical shipments and molecules for research and development. It 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.

Consultants in its management consulting group bring a mix to management of complex portfolios with deep expertise in key therapies and all aspects of pharmaceutical strategies. Product and Portfolio Strategy leverages the best cross functional understanding of scientific and commercial trends, deep competencies in decision theory and portfolio analysis and industry thought leadership to help clients make decisions.

Launch, Brand Management and Other Offerings

In 2008, launch, brand management and other offerings represented approximately 27% of the Company’s worldwide revenue. Launch and Brand Management Offerings combine information, analytical tools and consulting and services to address client needs relevant to the management of each stage of the lifecycle of their pharmaceutical brands. The areas covered include: brand planning, pricing and market access, promotion management, and performance management. The principal offerings under Launch and Brand business line include Promotional Audits and Promotion Management Consulting; Pricing and Market Access Consulting; Oncology Analyzer and Consulting, and Forecasting Portfolio. It also provides products and services in managed markets, consumer health and consulting and services.

The Company competes with Taylor Nelson, Cegedim, and Wolters Kluwer.