A decade of digital strategy in the pharmaceutical industry

The Internet became an issue of interest to pharmaceutical companies in the early 1990s. At the time, excitement was very much focused on what e-commerce and the Internet could do for healthcare delivery (as opposed to the development and sale of pharmaceuticals or medical devices). The concept of the ‘health portal’, a one-stop site where the user could obtain information, communicate and transact, came to the fore. This was a seductive idea in that the health portal was supposed to facilitate the smooth running of the healthcare system, by providing a system for electronic transactions that would otherwise be performed through paper-based systems, and also offer a single central resource of healthcare-related information (for example health advice for consumers or the latest prescription guidelines for doctors). Companies such as Healtheon/WebMD (co-founded by Netscape pioneer Jim Clark) claimed that the Internet would streamline and standardize communications between physicians, hospitals, insurers, pharmacies, laboratories and patients. The benefits included a reduction in administrative expenses and an increase in customer satisfaction and the quality of care. No longer would a secretary at a local physician’s office type up a claim and fax it to an insurance company, where another secretary would re-enter it into their proprietary system; prescriptions would be filled over the Internet and centrally held medical records updated automatically.