Good morning. My name is Gary Fabian. I've been associated with IMS Health for over 20 years in a variety of roles. As vice-president of public affairs, I work closely with the medical, pharmacy, and research communities across Canada, primarily in a collaborative fashion, around the optimal utilization of medications.
IMS Health is the world's principal provider of information, statistical research, and consulting services to the pharmaceutical and health care sectors. We track over one million products globally, helping health care stakeholders to implement evidence-based decision-making.
We've been operating our business in Canada since 1960. Our Canadian head office is in Montreal, where we have over 850 employees. We have another office in Toronto with over 85 people, and a small office in Edmonton, Alberta.
We collect data from over 6,500 sources in Canada, including hospitals, pharmacies, pharmaceutical manufacturers, wholesalers, and physicians, to yield extensive information on diagnoses and disease treatments, including prescribing patterns and pharmaceutical utilization trends.
We maintain the most comprehensive national prescription database in Canada. Essentially, we have any and all information related to pharmaceutical distribution, consumption, and use in Canada, with one very important exception: we do not collect, use, or disclose any identifiable patient information; therefore, patient privacy is never at risk. We go to great lengths to ensure that patient privacy is always protected.
The facts are that since our Canadian operation began in 1960, we have never experienced a breach of patient privacy. We have never received a complaint from a patient that their privacy has been compromised. We have never received a complaint from a patient that their relationship with a physician has been jeopardized or compromised in any way. We have never received a complaint from a physician that their relationship with a patient has been compromised or jeopardized. This is the reality as opposed to unsubstantiated speculation.
We provide information products and services to governments, researchers, health providers, regulators and the private sector—pharmaceutical and biotech companies—to support the safe and effective use of medications, evaluation of drug policies, implementation of best practices and economic analyses. Physician-led research has used IMS data to measure the impact of continuing medical education initiatives on prescribing practices. Quality improvement initiatives for the use of antibiotics in Alberta and B.C., the development of new prescribing guidelines for Ritalin to children in Quebec and a long-term study examining the use of psychotherapies for depressive disorders associated with multiple sclerosis currently being conducted in western Canada have all benefited from the use of IMS data. It is our paying commercial clients that have enabled us to develop and invest in the production of the timely, up-to-date information available and to provide it gratis to help researchers.
On the government side, we provide data to the Patent Medicine Prices Review Board to assist with their previous setting of prices for brand drugs, and currently for the monitoring of the prices of generic drugs in Canada. Health Canada is also an important client of IMS and uses our information to assess current drug legalization trends and to develop health policies. Other government departments, federally and provincially, frequently use IMS expertise for similar reasons.
We are counselled by a medical adviser board comprised of three prominent physicians: Dr. Léo-Paul Landry, who is here with us and represents Quebec, Dr. Bill Orovan, representing Ontario, and Dr. Larry Olhauser, representing the western region. We interact with numerous physician-researchers in several academic settings, such as universities and other health research centres of excellence.
Our data is neutral—that is, we do not make judgments on whether the use of a particular therapy is good or bad—it is used by others to support evidence-based medicine and to make policy decisions in critical areas such as controlling drug costs, assessing utilization trends and the development of prescribing guidelines. Our objective is to ensure that we have the most comprehensive, valid and timely data available to support evidence-based decisions.