Merck Annual Report 2000

    A Pioneering Venture: e-Health Venture Capital Fund
    In November, we formed Merck Capital Ventures. This fund will invest up to $100 million in private, new enterprises with an Internet focus operating in areas related to the commercialization, distribution and delivery of pharmaceuticals and related health care services. The fund will not be used to invest in research-based pharmaceutical, vaccine or biotechnology companies. The fund’s chief executive, Per G. H. Lofberg, led Merck-Medco into a leadership position in Internet health care.
    The fund will search out businesses that provide the possibility of:

Leveraging the Internet to help select physicians and patients for clinical trials.
Connecting with customers, physicians, plan sponsors and retail pharmacists as well as creating ways in which all these audiences can connect to one another.
Allowing physicians to issue prescriptions electronically.

    Merck-Medco Joins Venture to Jumpstart Electronic Prescription Writing
    Merck-Medco in February 2001 formed a new, independent business-to-business venture, called RxHub, with AdvancePCS and Express Scripts to advance the adoption and use of electronic prescribing tools and physician office technologies commonly known as “point-of-care.”
    The goal of this new company is to provide a single, standardized channel of communication that will link all parties in the delivery chain, enabling the communication of prescribing information and transmission of electronic prescriptions among physicians, pharmacies, technology companies, PBMs and health plans. This new venture will accelerate the development of an additional and real-time communication channel with physicians to supplement Merck-Medco’s successful fax, phone and mail channels.
    After pursuing electronic prescribing initiatives individually, the three pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) determined that founding this joint venture was the best and most efficient way to accelerate an industry-wide solution to the current information gaps in the electronic prescribing process. Today, physicians using their electronic prescribing tools are unable to identify the drug benefit provider for all the covered patients within their practice, which is a barrier to greater adoption and use of electronic prescribing technology.
    The system will help ensure greater accuracy and safety in two ways. First, the system will provide physicians with greater clinical information by allowing the PBM to alert them to potential interactions between drugs they plan to prescribe and other medications the patient is taking. Second, the physician will be able to transmit prescriptions electronically to the patient’s pharmacy, reducing the possibility of medication errors caused by handwritten prescriptions.

Back to Access