MEDI-PROMOTION's SAMPLE-SCRIPTS Rx PAD TEST MARKETING PROGRAM

MEDI-PROMOTION's SAMPLE-SCRIPTS Rx PAD TEST MARKETING PROGRAM will involve 1,000 physicians in three cities. Sponsored by 10 pharmaceutical manufacturers, Medi-Promotions, Inc., the producer of Medi-Scripts prescription pads, said that the test marketing program is slated to begin within the next two weeks and last for approximately three months. The market test will be sponsored by ten pharmaceutical companies. Sample-Scripts are "preprinted prescriptions for starter doses of medication which by the stroke of the physician's pen, creates a legal prescription for a sample," Medi-Promotions said in a recent release. Sample-Scripts consist of a desk unit with prescriptions for free samples of selected pharmaceutical products, along with a Medi-Scripts' blank prescription pad. Each free sample Rx pad contains 25 Sample-Scripts for a selected product. The personalized units contain Rx pads for products in up to eight therapeutic classes, with only one product per therapeutic class. Medi-Promotions noted that the units can be adapted to a singlesponsor pocket version, which would focus on just one product and one therapeutic class. The physicians involved in the test market program are primary care physicians that already receive Medi-Script desk units, which include blank prescription forms and a memo pad. A maximum of 25,000 patients could be involved in the Sample-Script test program, Medi-Promotions said. Medi-Promtions noted what it sees as the benefits of Sample-Scripts over hard sampling for drug firms. Sample-Scripts are: highly accountable and therefore reduce the possibility of drug diversion; lessen the probability of generic prescribing by physicians and substitution by the pharmacists; more cost effective than hard sampling, can reach physicians unaccessable to the sales force, and provide incentive and motivation to the pharmacist to stock a particular product. Sample-Scripts' benefits to physicians include not having to keep and inadvertently dispense expired products, the safe sampling of certain scheduled substances, and the convenience of prescribing and sampling at the same time, Medi-Promotions stated. The company also suggested that pharmacists will benefit from the added volume of business normally lost from physician sampling, and the opportunity to generate goodwill with customers. On the Sample-Script there is a perforated control stub which the pharmacist tears off after filling the prescription, fills out a dispensing acknowledgement on the back and submits the stub to Medi-Promotions for reimbursement. Medi-Promotions said that the pharmacist is reimbursed for the "average wholesale price of dispensed Sample-Script plus a 35% mark-up or $2.00 whichever is higher." Iselin, New Jersey-based Medi-Promotions was established in 1978. The firm has been marketing its Medi-Scripts blank prescription pads for 10 years.