Merck Annual Report 2000

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Merck launches first television ad for chickenpox: Merck’s first-ever TV ad for a vaccine-preventable disease ran in August. The ad, featuring the classic toys of children’s playrooms, seeks to educate American parents about the serious nature of chickenpox. To learn more about our vaccines, turn to

    Merck Vaccines pioneers Web sites
    One outstanding example on the use of such technology to aid customers comes from the Merck Vaccine Division, which had about $1 billion in sales in 2000. The Division has launched several Web sites to disseminate information and market products to health care providers. The most prominent of these is www.vaccinesbynet.com.
    Many U.S. clients already have registered on the site and a growing number use it to buy vaccines from Merck. This year, the Division introduced features that enabled customers to better manage their purchases and billing and to support the needs of their practices. Web sites also have been set up for information on chickenpox (www.chickenpoxinfo.com) and for hepatitis B (www.HepBinfo.com).
    The chickenpoxinfo.com Web site complements a consumer advertising campaign, including television commercials, which encourages parents in the United States to talk to their doctors about chickenpox. Chickenpox is such a potentially serious disease that the conversation between parent and physician becomes a critical component of the disease-prevention process.

    Merck-Medco is the most successful provider
    of pharmacy care in the United States
    Another important factor contributing to Merck’s ongoing success is Merck-Medco, which manages pharmaceutical benefits for 65 million people. Merck-Medco improves the quality of care and lowers health care costs through advanced technologies and clinical programs. For 2000, the volume of prescriptions handled increased 22 percent to more than 450 million and drug spend increased 29 percent to $23 billion.
    Merck-Medco has an excellent record of winning and keeping customers and clients include 150 of the Fortune 500 companies, 25 million Blue Cross Blue Shield members, the largest federal employee program and 14 state employee programs. We are saving these clients more than $1 billion annually through the development and implementation of the most effective and state-of-the-art programs for controlling the rate of increase in drug expenditures. In 1999, average drug trend increase among our customers was 16 percent; in 2000, it slowed to 14 percent.

The convenience of a online pharmacy: Mark Freeman, whose pharmacy benefits are managed by Merck-Medco, discovered the convenience of one-stop shopping on www.merckmedco.com. The Houston, Texas, resident uses this online pharmacy to refill prescriptions and buy a wide assortment of over-the-counter medicines and drugstore products from Merck-Medco’s joint venture partner CVS. The purchases are delivered directly to his door.
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    Our success in meeting the needs of our customers and providing the highest quality pharmaceutical care enabled us to win the contract for UnitedHealth Group, which covers nearly 10 million people. In 2000, we also acquired ProVantage Healthcare, a pharmacy benefits manager representing 5 million new lives.
    Merck-Medco has the technology in place to electronically review millions of prescriptions, with opportunities to improve care and control costs. Partners for Healthy Aging and other drug utilization review programs significantly reduce inappropriate prescriptions, a common cause of adverse drug events among elderly Americans. Our members have 24-hour access to pharmacists, customer service and other important health information through our customer service call centers and merckmedco.com.
    Merck-Medco uses state-of-the-art technology to link patients, physicians and pharmacists to improve the quality of care and reduce overall health costs. Our automated pharmacy in Nevada is the most technologically advanced pharmacy in the world – dispensing more than 5,000 prescriptions per hour and more than 600,000 prescriptions per week.
    The Nevada pharmacy dispenses prescriptions at a 99.9999998 percent error-free rate, making it the industry benchmark in quality, safety and productivity. We are building a second automated pharmacy in Willingboro, N.J., to be operational in the fall of 2001.
    Merck-Medco leverages information technology to improve services and efficiency with relevant, personalized tools and information for our key customers: members, physicians, retail pharmacists and plan sponsors.
    Merckmedco.com is the world’s largest, most experienced online pharmacy, dispensing over 110,000 prescriptions weekly. Merckmedco.com handled 4.2 million Internet prescriptions in 2000, with sales of nearly $460 million – larger than all other major online pharmacies combined. In 2000, Merck-Medco launched four eHealth centers, offering trusted health care information and tools to improve health care and health outcomes, including personalized treatment reminders and health and wellness messages.
    In July 2000, Merck-Medco launched an over-the-counter product Web site as a result of an alliance with CVS to provide access to over-the-counter and non-prescription products through merckmedco.com. Members can conveniently buy both prescription and non-prescription products on one site.
    Merck-Medco is not only pursuing connectivity with customers, but with physicians, plan sponsors and retail pharmacists – as well as creating ways in which all these audiences can connect to one another.

    More venturing down
    the e-highway
    Encouraged by the success of these Internet initiatives, we have created a $100 million e-health venture capital fund to invest in emerging companies in the areas of commercialization, distribution and delivery of pharmaceuticals and related health care services. Per Lofberg has relinquished his position as chairman of Merck-Medco to run the fund, called Merck Capital Ventures.
    In February 2001, Merck-Medco, AdvancePCS and Express Scripts, Inc. agreed to form a groundbreaking new venture that will develop an electronic exchange enabling physicians who use electronic prescribing technology to link with participating pharmacies, prescription benefit managers and health plans.
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    Leading the global access debate
    So far, this report has addressed ways that physicians, payers and patients can access our medicines and information about them. But around the world today, there remains a larger debate on access. The debate takes on different shapes in different parts of the world, but the underlying question is always the same: how does Merck work with governments, non-governmental organizations and health care policymakers to ensure that we can bring the best of medicines to the most people.
    In the United States today, the debate is over how best to provide access to older Americans and others who lack reliable coverage for prescription drugs. In Europe, discussions are now taking place over how best to stimulate market-based competition in order to give European consumers equitable access to the latest treatments and information about those treatments – and to ensure that European companies participate fully in this new era of biomedical research. In the developing world, the debate persists over how best to provide access to prevention, care and treatment for HIV/AIDS and other deadly diseases.

The Merck Manual of Medical Information – Home Edition

The Merck Manual – Credible health information at your fingertips: As patients and consumers become more active participants in health care decisions affecting their lives, access to comprehensive, reliable and trustworthy health information has become increasingly important around the world. Merck is ideally positioned to provide consumers with credible health information. The Merck Manual, often called “the Physician’s Bible,” has been published for more than a century and is now available in 17 languages – including Japanese and Chinese.
In 1997, Merck introduced a manual written for consumers in plain every-day language: The Merck Manual of Medical Information – Home Edition. Today, consumers can log on free to www.merckhomeedition.com to hear a heartbeat, look inside a human body or learn how to pronounce some of those tongue-twisting medical terms.

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