I want to let you know about a webinar this Wednesday called Demystifying 867 Analytics, which looks at the use of point-of-sale data from retailers and wholesalers. You should sign up and listen.
Yes, I know, webinars are usually boring, but this one will benefit from the presence of Josh Halpern and Jeff Sager from Integrichain. In my opinion, Integrichain is quickly becoming the leader in providing demand visibility at the outlet/point-of-care level to pharmaceutical manufacturers.
I’ve been particularly impressed with the company’s ability to connect multiple data streams from the pharmaceutical supply chain -- ex-factory sales data, wholesaler data (EDI 867 and 852 transaction sets), and third party data. Integrichain’s outlet-focused, bottoms-up (my words) methodology should also allow new data sources, such as ePedigree information, to be easily incorporated. In other words, they are not beholden to a single data stream or data provider.
Integrichain is benefiting from the IMS Health data mess. Novartis actually asked their sales reps to return bonus money because of faulty IMS market share data. Merck, Wyeth, and Lilly are reportedly also having problems with the accuracy of IMS’ mix of projected and survey data.
In the sprit of full disclosure, I should mention that I like Integrichain and its approach so much that I agreed to serve on the company's Advisory Board.