Online Trade Show for Short-Dated Pharmaceuticals
ShortMeds (shortmeds. com) has turned its service into an online trade show to help pharmaceutical manufacturers and healthcare distributors find licensed pharmaceutical buyers for their short-dated inventories. Each selling company has a "booth" where they can post information at no charge and interact with registered buyers. Banner ads can be used by "exhibitors" to drive traffic to their booths and the "show" is partially supported by solution providers that serve every function of the pharmaceutical industry.
St. Louis, MO (PRWEB) July 17, 2007
Recently, ShortMeds (shortmeds. com (http://www. shortmeds. com)) revamped its service and turned it into an online trade show and interactive community for the entire pharmaceutical industry. Allowing US manufacturers and healthcare distributors to post inventories in their "booths" at no charge, ShortMeds is guaranteed to see an even wider variety of companies and products posted on its web site.
Since 2004, ShortMeds has provided an online marketplace for short-dated inventories from US manufacturers and healthcare distributors. The companies that post products on ShortMeds must be members of the Healthcare Distribution Management Association (HDMA) and must comply with the Prescription Drug Marketing Act (PDMA). In the past, companies had to pay an up front administration fee based on the value of their posting or pay a commission on what was sold. This limited the number of companies that were willing to post their inventories. But now, ShortMeds is allowing these companies to post inventories to their booths at no charge.
And their inventories and prices are viewable by their competitors, which should drive prices down to the point where licensed pharmaceutical buyers will use ShortMeds on a regular basis to save money on products they purchase. "Because the companies are posting their short-dated inventories and not their regular inventories, they shouldn't mind making their prices public," says John Matthews, President/CEO of ShortMeds. These companies can even attach Excel spreadsheets that detail their postings with vital information such as NDC number, Lot number, Expiration Date, Product Description, Product Form, Product Size, Quantity and Price. Each company's policies regarding minimum order size and to whom they will sell to are also posted in each booth.
ShortMeds has always been a free service for licensed pharmaceutical buyers and will continue to be. To make it even more convenient to use, users can now "subscribe" (for free) to a posting company's booth and be alerted via email whenever the company updates their short-dated inventory. "Buyers can even interact with each posting company by leaving messages at a company's booth, by accessing their profile for address and phone number information or they can use the private email system that ShortMeds provides," says Matthews.
Solution providers that serve every function of the pharmaceutical industry also have booths where they can promote the goods and services they provide. Some of these solution providers include marketing agencies, clinical research providers and medical education companies. Pharmaceutical buyers, manufacturers and healthcare distributors can browse their booths and communicate with them in the same ways. All "exhibitors" can use banner ads that run throughout the ShortMeds web site to drive traffic to their booths.
ShortMeds believes this is a viable market because of the continued pressures concerning pharmaceutical donation. The World Health Organization (WHO) has established guidelines for donating drugs to countries in need and says that "After arrival in the recipient country, all donated drugs should have a remaining shelf-life of at least one-year." This guideline was established because of logistical problems in many recipient countries. There are limited possibilities for immediate distribution, and it may take as long as six to nine months before drugs reach dispensing sites. As a result, US manufacturers are in a pickle, because once their products reach the 12-month window, they are no longer candidates for donation abroad. Matthews adds, "We have also found that many healthcare distributors would rather unload their short-dated products at a discount and take advantage of the positive cash flows, rather than waiting for the proper time to return them to the manufacturers."
ShortMeds is a service provided by Incentials, LLC, located in St. Louis, MO. Its founder, John Matthews, has worked in the pharmaceutical and financial industries for over 17 years with companies like Hoechst Marion Roussel Pharmaceuticals (now Sanofi-Aventis), Merz Pharmaceuticals, American Express Incentive Services and Tyco Healthcare/Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals.
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