While marketing has always been key to this, the advent of the Internet has meant that there are now a whole host of new opportunities for influencing market trends.

Pharmacart^® is available to pharmacists and pharmaceutical companies for extending sales beyond patent expiry, concentrating on how the use of websites and online techniques to educate and inform patients and physicians, so encouraging them to switch from an original product to a new formulation or follow-on-product.

Pharmacart^® can be easily customized to create an integrated product offering for select pharmaceutical companies of their respective online products and services. It can provide a comprehensive online solution enabling pharmacists to reach their clients with specific online product information, relevant medical information and enhance their visibility and reputation.

Recent surveys have shown that consumers are increasingly using the Internet to access low-cost and trusted medical information. Thus, business-to-consumer (B2C) product websites, containing a high level of interactive content and features, represent an effective means of attracting users and engendering word-of-mouth and viral marketing amongst consumers, and promoting brand awareness and loyalty during a product’s lifecycle.

Pharmaceutical manufacturers see pharmacists as becoming of increasing importance, particularly the role they are playing in delivering health care, and medicines management Part of that is medicines support services, and a range of things that pharmacists can do in connection with medicines management projects.

With Pharmacart^® not only can prescriptions be renewed online for delivery or pick-up but also action forms can be filled in online allowing pharmacists to help them talk to patients about symptoms they might be experiencing, or problems with their medication.

• Patients do not lose the benefit of personal contact with a pharmacist

• IMSPharmacart^® pays attention to the advantages of person-to-person contact with a pharmacist, an important professional that can protect them from prescribing errors and other drug errors which can happen in the prescription and over-the-counter delivery system.

• Online access to important information approved via the pharmacist and their healthcare team is sometimes much easier than access within a busy pharmacy.

• Although a pharmacist can communicate better in person, a dynamic content enriched website and exchange of e-mails can provide significant extension of that communication.

• IMSPharmacart^® allows a neighborhood pharmacist together with their store of information about a client's medical history, prescription history, and personal preferences to know and better advise a client than some distant Internet pharmacist.

Pharmacists are increasingly challenged to enhance their client relationship programs. The development of Web sites using IMSPharmacart^® that provide valuable online services to their clients, such as access to drug product information, online detailing and continuing medical education, will provide both them and pharmaceutical companies a means to further strengthen marketing relationships.