HealthContentAdvisors

Nielsen, Wolters Kluwer Health Form Alliance

• Posted July 24th 2008
• by Marji

Wolters Kluwer Health and The Nielsen Company yesterday announced the launch of the Healthcare Consumer Informatics Alliance, which will provide healthcare-related manufacturers and media companies with a better understanding of consumer behaviors and attitudes to help improve the effectiveness and efficiency of their product messages, sales and media planning.

More specifically, the Healthcare Consumer Informatics Alliance has developed data solutions to give marketers and media agencies insights into consumer behavior related to purchases of prescription, over-the-counter and other health-related products.

The initiative’s first platform, HealthScape, combines de-identified patient prescription-related transactional data with consumer purchasing, attitudinal and behavior information to provide insights into therapeutic market activity, patient trends, consumer segmentation and targeting opportunities.

The platform combines Nielsen’s expertise in consumer health and media and Wolters Kluwer Health’s expertise in prescribed pharmaceuticals. To do this, Healthscape integrates Nielsen’s consumer OTC and CPG purchasing and behavioral data from Homescan and Scantrack with Wolters Kluwer Health’s anonymous patient longitudinal and transactional data from Source Lx and Pharmaceutical Audit Suite (PHAST).

Overall, the alliance’s products will link health-related purchases to influencers such as managed care, TV and Internet advertising, in-store merchandizing and physician recommendations. This will provide insights into why consumers purchase particular products and give marketers and media agencies metrics they can use to improve the effectiveness of their strategies.

This collaboration between Nielsen and Wolters Kluwer Health has all of the ingredients to be a very successful endeavor. As we’ve discussed before, marketers are always seeking ways in which to get the most accurate insights about their target audience. But gaining this information from an audience of anonymous consumers is an incredible challenge. Perhaps with the confidential nature of the pharmaceutical business, this is an even greater challenge for marketers in this space.

This new solution will undoubtedly be a welcome addition to the pharmaceutical marketing space. Of course, it will have to prove its true value first. But that shouldn’t be a problem with the knowledge and expertise of market leaders such as Nielsen and Wolters Kluwer Health behind it. Both companies’ expertise seems to fit nicely together and have created a solution that should serve its customer base well.