Thomson Pharma draws from the complete range of Thomson Scientific databases (including the Investigational Drugs database (IDdb), Derwent World Patents Index, Delphion, DRUGDEX, and Web of Science) as well as content from other Thomson groups (including news from NewsEdge, company information from Thomson Financial, and products from the Healthcare group). Thomson Pharma will also integrate content from Thomson Legal and Regulatory in a later release.

Thomson says the integrated research tool will provide scientific researchers and other professionals with the most complete pharmaceutical information source available on the market today. The seven core Thomson Pharma content areas include drug information, intellectual property data, literature and news, company data, chemical information, sequence data, and drug target information.

Users can create customizable home pages based on user group and therapy area (biologists, chemists, licensing and business development, clinical trials, or competitive intelligence). Pharma offers five ways to search with specialty indexing: Quick, Guided, Form, Expert, and Browse Indexes. The product is designed to be easy for end users who don't have to know anything about the underlying databases. Results are presented in a single consolidated record that focuses on the content, not the source of the content. But, information professionals can click on a small information button link to reference the original data source.

According to company representatives, the consolidated reports are able to show relationships that might not be obvious when looking at individual sources. In developing the product, Thomson did a great deal of data mapping and editorial integration to allow for the contextual presentation of diverse information resources. All related content is cross-linked and accessible.

Thomson said that customer feedback over 8 months, including market research, questionnaires, and interviews, was key to the development of Pharma. "It is this type of feedback that drove the development of Thomson Pharma, and we continue to maintain our work with customers to evolve the product," said Ian Tarr, executive vice president, Pharma & Chemical Markets, Thomson Scientific. "We accepted the challenge to create a resource that would break down the information barriers to the business-critical content necessary for our customers to maintain a competitive advantage."

Tarr continued: "Thomson offers best-in-class content, providing access to the most complete data available and the most efficient technologies essential for small and large companies alike. It is the paradigm of what can be achieved when high-quality content and the most progressive technologies are merged."

Commenting on the new product, analyst Janice McCallum at Shore Communications, Inc. called it "a step toward providing users with a ‘solution' that utilizes content to provide its answers—rather than a disconnected collection of content waiting to be sought out."

Other companies are working on similar initiatives, as McCallum pointed out: "Recent moves by Reed Elsevier also provide evidence of other STM publishing heavyweights moving toward providing their content as part of an integrated package. Just last week, Reed Elsevier Ventures was the lead investor in a round of financing for Inpharmatica, a company that provides a drug discovery platform." Her bottom line: "Now, more than ever, publishers of premium content need to move even closer to their ultimate users in order to provide services and solutions that merit premium prices."

While Thomson sought customer input for the product, it did not involve customers in any actual beta testing of Pharma (unlike the 8 months of user trials for Elsevier's recently launched Scopus product—see http://newsbreaks.infotoday.com/nbreader.asp?ArticleId=16330). Visitors to Thomson's exhibit booth in London will have the first chance to see the product in action. Customers I spoke with said they welcomed the expanded access to content resources, but, lacking a demo or test access, they didn't yet have a handle on how they or their end users would react.

Pricing could also be a factor for some customers. Thomson said that exact pricing for Thomson Pharma is not yet available, but it will be based on per-seat use with volume discounts. As analysts from Outsell, Inc. pointed out: "[T]his may be problematic for customers whose users will have very diverse needs and usage levels. Few will use everything on the platform, or use it in the same way, so some customers are likely to call for pay-per-use, concurrent user, or hybrid pricing models."

Customers with whom I spoke reported feeling considerable pressure from their Thomson reps to renew existing subscriptions (which have increased in price) at the same level of use as 2004 and to agree to migrate to the new product. One customer was resentful of what she called "strong-arming of libraries," even while admitting that her company would likely subscribe to Pharma to have access to its many impressive resources. "There's nothing to compare—Thomson has a monopoly on key pharmaceutical data," she commented.

While Thomson has acquired many information products for its portfolio (and is in the process of acquiring IHI, including its IDRAC regulatory product), several customers noted that they still need resources from multiple vendors. As Outsell analysts stated: "Some information managers in the pharmaceutical industry are likely to hesitate to buy into a single platform that does a great job of integrating Thomson content but excludes the rest of the world's content. It's a classic proprietary container conundrum: It's better than delivering content in a lot of little containers, but now it's a mega-container that holds only Thomson products."