New business intelligence tools coming to your computer screens.
New products by Quintiles
By DAVID RANII, Staff Writer
NEW YORK -- Quintiles Transnational intends to roll out a series of informational products in the next 18 months with the potential to generate from $225 million to $600 million in annual revenue.
Most of the products, which are aimed at pharmaceutical companies and the broader health-care industry, will be Internet-based. They are de-signed to put megabytes of information about the sales and uses of drugs at clients' fingertips. Unveiled on Monday to about 150 analysts and institutional investors, the products have been anticipated ever since Quintiles announced the $1.7 billion acquisition of Envoy Corp. in December.
Envoy electronically processes 1 billion health-care claims annually, creating one of the largest proprietary databases in the industry. But Wall Street has been skeptical that Quintiles, the world's largest pharmaceutical services company, paid too dearly for the business.
The product announcements were part of Quintiles' strategy to convince naysayers that the deal ultimately will generate big dividends.
Durham-based Quintiles also hammered home the message that the immense data generated by Envoy is being used throughout the company. For one pharmaceutical client, for example, Quintiles was able to identify 10 times as many physicians suitable to help run an experimental drug trial than it would have been to do before the Envoy acquisition, said Stephen Ober, who heads Quintiles' Synergy Health Care data business.
Dennis Gillings, Quintiles' chairman and chief executive officer, called the company's data-driven Quinternet Informatics business "the third leg of the three-legged stool." Quintiles' two main businesses involve helping drug companies test and analyze experimental drugs and hiring out sales personnel to the pharmaceutical industry. The Informatics business is expected to generate 15 percent of the company's revenue this year.
The first of what Quintiles calls its e-business products, Rx Market Monitor, will be launched early next year. It will allow clients to obtain sales data by geographic region, the type of physicians who are prescribing the drug, the symptoms of patients for whom the drug is being prescribed and demographic patient data such as gender and age.
Other Web-based products in Quintiles' pipeline will provide detailed information in a variety of areas, including the use of medical devices and medical procedures; drug and other treatment patterns for specific patient groups -- men, women, seniors, and children; and the most common treatment regimens for different diseases. In addition to the dozen Web-based products, Quintiles also is rolling out three custom research products that will be tailored to client's desires. Those products will offer sophisticated analysis of monthly drug sales, drug uses and the sales progress of brand-new drugs. Bernard Lirola, an analyst with Needham & Co., said the market should be receptive to the new offerings. "Clearly, there's a need for more facts, more detailed information," he said.
But it is too early to gauge how competitors such as IMS, a publicly held pharmaceutical market research company based in Pennsylvania, will respond to Quintiles' challenge. In Lirola's estimation, IMS would have to acquire or team up with a claims processing company to accumulate equivalent data. Quintiles announced last week that its third- and fourth-quarter revenue would fall well short of expectations, which drove the stock down 42 percent Thursday. Quintiles executives made only passing reference to that problem at Tuesday's session, which was scheduled long before the earnings shortfall became apparent. The company's stock closed Tuesday at $20.188, up 31.3 cents. Gillings made it clear, however, that he has not been humbled by last week's events. He complained at one point that analysts gave too much credence to what they heard from competitors, who lack the industry insight that he has. "I don't mean to be arrogant when I say that," Gillings added.
David Ranii can be reached at 829-4877 or dranii@nando.com |
