Research Giants in Multi-Year Alliance

Top ten global research agencies IMS Health and Information Resources, Inc. (IRI) have announced a global, multi-year alliance to provide intelligence, analytics and consulting for the consumer health marketplace.

The partnership promises a seamless, end-to-end view of three key market segments - prescription medicines, over-the-counter (OTC) products and consumer packaged goods (CPG).

IMS and IRI already are working together in a number of countries. According to the partners' estimates, the global consumer health market is valued at $400 billion, and is expected to grow at 6% a year for the next five years. The initial focus of the alliance will be on the US and European markets.

Gilles Pajot, COO of IMS, says the alliance 'leverages our two companies' respective strengths, and enables us to enhance and expand our offerings backed by the healthcare industry's most robust information, analytics and consulting capabilities.' He adds: 'With a truly integrated view of consumer health marketplace dynamics, our clients can make better decisions on how to identify market opportunities, optimize portfolios and allocate resources to drive growth.'

IRI President and CEO John Freeland comments: 'Today's global prescription, over-the-counter and consumer packaged goods markets are rapidly converging, creating the need for a unified view of product performance supported by predictive analytics. This alliance will lead to a better understanding of prescription and OTC purchases, and their relationship to consumer packaged goods purchasing activity.'

IMS, which had $2.0 billion in revenue in 2006, tracks more than 1 million healthcare products daily, covering over 70 percent of all pharmaceutical sales transactions worldwide. The firm uses de-identified healthcare data to deliver critical, real-world disease and treatment insights for medical researchers, government agencies, and healthcare and pharmaceutical companies. It is online at www.imshealth.com.

IRI, whose Healthcare Solutions Group provides pharmaceutical, healthcare and worldwide consumer goods companies, as well as retailers, with consumer intelligence and analytic services, is on the web at http://us.infores.com .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.

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