Most people will be aware of the various TV consumer programmes which have, over the last few years, compared the aggregate cost of a typical shopping basket of groceries bought from different retailers.

We have adapted this concept to the UK pharmaceuticals market, and created a report by which our users can select their own “basket” of products, from the thousands of lines held in the PharmaTouchStone database.

They are then able to select which suppliers or wholesalers they would like to be included in the enquiry, and the resultant outcome is an instant overview of the comparative costs of “one-stop shopping”.

This facility provides a variety of useful benefits:

• suppliers can use the output of this report to demonstrate to their customers the cost-effectiveness of their price-list;

• wholesalers can instantly compare some, or all, of their current price lists with those of their competitors;

• manufacturers can monitor the market positioning of their various distributors.

This report is yet another example of the flexibility of PharmaTouchStone, demonstrating again the adage knowledge is power. Using our database as a window on the world, WaveData subscribers have another powerful tool to aid them in fine-tuning their commercial strategies.