Data Flow: Tracking Consumers

Given sensitivities about the safety of patient data, many pharmaceutical makers aren't comfortable maintaining databases of personally identifiable information. Some companies are turning to third-party services providers such as Optas Inc. and MicroMass Communications Inc. that specialize in providing relationship-marketing services to consumers who opt in to pharmaceutical companies' marketing efforts.

Optas provides a range of services including building and maintaining consumer databases, analyzing consumer behavior, conducting surveys, operating call centers, and fulfilling requests for marketing materials. Database marketing company Harte-Hanks Inc. also provides a range of customer-relationship-marketing services for drugmakers.

MicroMass specializes in applying "behavioral science" principles to the customer-acquisition and -loyalty programs it operates on behalf of pharmaceutical makers. For example, it manages GlaxoSmithKline plc's Committed Quitters program for users of the company's Nicorette and NicoDerm products. MicroMass also provides services for Johnson & Johnson and Novartis.

Dendrite International Inc. provides pharmaceutical makers with a range of sales and marketing applications, collects and analyzes customer data, conducts marketing promotions, and even operates call centers on behalf of drugmakers.

Siperian Inc., which provides data-integration technology and services for pharmaceutical companies, has focused its efforts on integrating data about physicians and other drug prescribers. While the company also has worked with consumer data that's aggregated and not personally identifiable, marketing VP Anurag Wadehra doesn't expect to be working with data from individual consumers in the near future because of the tight restrictions on using such information.

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