What’s in a Name?
A year ago, Quintiles and IMS Health merged, forming QuintilesIMS. Now, in a shift of branding strategy, the contract research giant is renaming itself IQVIA, pronounced as “I-Q-via” /ai’kjuːviə/.
According to an article by Angus Liu in Fierce Biotech, the name “echoes the origin of the company’s services” as from IMS (I) and Quintiles (Q), “but it is ‘VIA’ the path forward that we hope to inspire and ignite real change — the potential to use data and science to find better solutions for humans,” company spokesperson Tor Constantino said. Beginning on November 15, the company has been listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the new ticker IQV.
While Quintiles and IMS are practically household words, IQVIA has bigger plans. Yesterday is yesterday.
As Constantino said, “Now that we have completed the majority of our integration activities, we are ready to refocus our attention outward and introduce a new brand to the market. A brand that demonstrates our courage to reimagine what is possible and create solutions for a bold, better future of healthcare.”
When the two companies merged, market data and analytics were integrated into the CRO’s offerings. IVQIA will follow that path, backed by a new platform called Core. Offering the world’s largest curated healthcare information source, analytics, technologies and industry knowledge across therapeutic areas and geographies, Core will become an integral part to IQVIA’s capabilities.
The company unveiled its new brand after a strong third quarter. Revenue for the quarter was $2.02 billion, growing 4.8 percent as compared to the same period last year. Acquisitions contributed about 1.5 percentage points to the growth, and data also played a role. Real-world business grew “double-digit,” according to company chairman and CEO Ari Bousbib.
“Our differentiated approach will utilize secondary data and advanced analytics to gain regulatory approval for label extension,” Bousbib said, adding that IQVIA won a multimillion-dollar deal in the field with a leading U.S. biotech. IQVIA’s Next-Gen clinical offering is getting more contracts, including three trials with a top 10 pharma, which the company had done no full-service clinical work with in about a decade, and a NASH study from a top 20 global pharma, which previously performed R&D mainly in house.
According to IQVIA’s website, “Healthcare is an industry designed to help humans.” The company seeks to “invest and commit to advancing human health, “to deliver value and real outcomes” and “to rise to the challenge to find the next breakthrough by making the most of increasingly limited resources.”
The website added, “We are inspired by the potential and propelled by the possibilities. We share the vision to drive healthcare forward. To see how we can help accelerate progress and achievements…Others are developing these medical breakthroughs. We do our part by using breakthroughs in insights, technology and human intelligence to reimagine and deliver ways to help make them a reality…It’s bigger than better clinical trials. Or advances in technologies and analytics. Or faster insights. It’s about exploring a new path to better health outcomes via Human Data Science. It’s about harnessing the power of the IQVIA CORE™ to channel the insights, commercial and scientific depth, and executional expertise that drive maximum value for our customers.”
The company concluded, “Motivated by the industry we help, we’re committed to providing solutions that enable life sciences companies to innovate with confidence, maximize opportunities, and, ultimately, drive human health outcomes forward.”
