Purchase adds mobile content delivery to PI’s slate of communications services
Physicians Interactive (PI; Libertyville, IL), which characterizes itself as “the leading digital sales and health marketing partner for life sciences companies,” has added Skyscape to its roster of acquisitions. Skyscape will continue as a wholly owned subsidiary; no purchase price was announced for privately held Skyscape, based in Marlborough, MA.
“With the addition of Skyscape, Physicians Interactive is poised to offer compelling services to engage physicians, both online as well as at the point of care, allowing life sciences companies to gain efficient access to this hard-to-reach audience,” said Donato Tramuto, PI’s vice chairman and CEO. “As a result of this deal, our third in 10 months, PI is now in a position to offer the broadest portfolio of services to physicians on the platform of their choice.”
PI itself was a spinout from Allscripts Health Solutions (Chicago), funded by Perseus LLC, a private-equity firm. Last spring, the company acquired MedManage (Bothell, WA), an “e-sampling” service company that enables physicians to request samples online.
All-Internet communications
The unifying theme in these three business entities is connecting with physicians via the Web. PI was founded in 1996 to deliver healthcare information from pharma manufacturers to physicians; the company says that it has conducted more than 1,000 online programs for over 150 brands. MedManage brings sample-ordering and —delivery capabilities; and now Skyscape, a delivery service for online health and medical content providers (including many of the leading medical publishers), brings over 1 million registered users who access tailored information via desktop or mobile devices.
Trumato adds that the acquisition “will allow for the development of new and enhanced decision support tools for health care professionals and expanded product offerings for pharmaceutical, biotech and other life science companies—all on one integrated platform available on multiple technologies.” PC