Source Informatics, Inc. (Phoenix, Arizona) is a leading prescription database and
data warehousing company for the pharmaceutical industry. Source provides
information to the major pharmaceutical companies, enabling them to pinpoint sales
and marketing efforts, measure sales force performance and selectively measure the
impact of promotional campaigns.
Before using CD-ROM as a storage and distribution media, many sales reports were prepared and distributed on paper or fiche. With CD-ROM, Source has the potential to realize significant savings related to reduced shipping costs. Shipping paper reports within the United States and to Europe on an expedited basis is extremely expensive relative to shipping a single CD-ROM disc.
In addition, Source prescription and healthcare databases were normally distributed to Source clients on magnetic tape cartridges. Since SourceÆs clients in the United States were generally æmainframe oriented,Æ receiving the databases on tape was very acceptable. However, when Source expanded to Europe, Source found many of their international customers were æPC orientedÆ and werenÆt able to easily handle magnetic tape cartridges. Using CD-ROM and CD-Recordable media has proven to be an attractive data interchange alternative to magnetic tape for Source clients in Europe and the United States.
With an objective to get away from paper, Source Informatics approached OPTIMUS to assess the feasibility of using CD-ROM as an information distribution media. A pilot project was pursued and proved very successful. OPTIMUS currently provides CD-ROM authoring, indexing, production and distribution services. Source provides the basic print image and data files to OPTIMUS and OPTIMUS does the rest. In addition, OPTIMUS includes their OPTIview viewer software on each CD to allow quick inquiry, access and retrieval of sales reports.
Compact discs are small, yet provide high storage capacity. Because of the ISO9660 standard, the discs can be read on any CD reader on any PC in the world. With the ubiquitous presence of CD readers on PCs, SourceÆs clients were able to easily accept the databases on compact disc media. Since producing CD-Recordable discs in very low volumes is cost effective, Source has been able to customize the CD-ROMs to only contain the reports and databases for a particular country or geographic region, bases on the clientÆs information needs.
Because of the many advantages associated with CD-ROM and the positive client reception, the usage has increased dramatically over time. Even with the advent of new global network based services, CD-ROM will have a continuing critical role relative to SourceÆs pharmaceutical and health care information delivery.
