IMS Health

IMS Health (nyse: RX) is an international consulting and data services company that supplies the pharmaceutical industry with sales data and consulting services. IMS Health was founded in 1954 by Bill Frohlich and David Dubow. Today IMS has operations in more than 100 countries and a global workforce of 7,700+ employees. It recently moved its headquarters from Fairfield, CT to Norwalk, CT.

Products
IMS collects pharmaceutical sales data from markets across the world. As of January 2007, they collect sales data from 75% of prescriptions in 100 countries around the world. In the U.S. they are able to cover 90% of pharmaceutical sales. This allows IMS to cover over one million pharmaceutical products from over 3,000 companies.

IMS also uses their own data to produce syndicated reports such as market forecasts. These predict how a market in a specific country or specific therapy area will change over time. This works through the production of baseline projections of sales and the application of different future events to this baseline to produce a forecast.

The consulting arm of IMS works on customised projects for the pharmaceutical industry. An example of how this might work would be if a new product was being developed by a pharmaceutical company they would want to know what an acceptable price would be for the product. IMS would attempt to give an idea of what might be acceptable through the use of market research (interviews with physicians, pharmacists and regulatory bodies) whilst also looking at other product launches of similar (analogous) products. This brings together IMS's sales data and primary research in the form of interviews to create a picture of what a government may be prepared to pay for a new, innovative drug.

In January 2008, IMS announced a 11% layoff of their global workforce.

History

 * IMS Health's corporate headquarters are located in Norwalk, Connecticut.
 * The company's chief executive is David Carlucci, formerly of IBM.
 * IMS has annual revenues of $2.0 billion.
 * In 2007 IMS was named 25 in The Business Week 50. This list represents companies that represent the "best in class" companies from the ten economic sectors that make up the S&P 500.

References and external links

 * IMS website
 * IMS Government Solutions
 * Top 25 Marketing Research Firms

IMS Health