Pharmaceutical and Medical Device Industry Gets Green Option on Earth Day
#earthday

MONCTON, NB, April 20 /CNW/ - Total Pricing Systems of Moncton, a leading communication services supplier to the pharmaceutical and medical device industry since 1991, has introduced Canada's first industry communication delivery and management approach that will significantly reduce the industries' ecological footprint while also donating money to health charities.

PPS Assist! is an innovative environmental, charitable and industry-driven collaborative initiative. Its goal is to help pharmaceutical companies, medical device companies, and the industry and customer stakeholder community, to reduce their collective ecological footprint associated with sales, marketing, corporate and news communications. Most appreciably, by doing so, they can also financially assist their favourite health charities. For all parties, it will also provide cost savings and improved business and document management.

"This new approach to marketing, sales, news and corporate communications will be a win-win situation for all pharmaceutical, medical device and industry stakeholders," says Total Pricing Systems President Tony Hebert. "By reducing the industries' ecological footprint and giving back to important health charities we can assist industry in placing more emphasis on its environmental commitments daily."

PPS Assist!'s new email communication management service will support the industries' customer requests from pharmacists, pharmacy owners and physicians by transferring documents from fax and direct mail delivery to email delivery. The PPS Assist! system will manage this transfer process for free and also encourage industry customers to participate in the initiative though a charitable donation in their name for each email they receive. Currently, the market distribution of pharmaceutical, medical device, news and industry stakeholder communications in Canada represents an average of 11 pages faxed per week and 7 pages sent via direct mail. With up to 45,000 marketed customers per week, that's 810,000 sheets of paper or over 42 million sheets of paper annually - plus the energy costs and other environmentally harmful materials such as inks and toners to produce them.

"We are very pleased with the early support we are receiving from many of the largest pharmaceutical, medical device and industry stakeholder groups. Most have solid environmental plans and have already taken action to reduce their footprint in general. PPS Assist! will offer that additional layer of support and choice to those initiatives," says Hebert. "Environmental responsibility applies to everyone, and this Earth Day we are encouraging the entire Canadian pharmaceutical, medical device, news and industry stakeholder community to take common sense steps in reducing their ecological footprints associated with their industry communications. By working together we can significantly reduce this industry's footprint, cut costs and give back to their favourite health charity all at the same time."

For more information or to join the initiative, please visit the PPS Assist! web site at www.ppsassist.com.

For further information: Tony Hebert, President, Total Pricing Systems Inc., [phone], [email protected], www.ppspharma.com