IQVIA Brand Guidelines: Quintiles, IMS Health & a 2017 Name Built From Both

A statistician’s consultancy in North Carolina.

The clinical-research half of IQVIA starts with Dennis Gillings, a statistician. English Wikipedia says he signed his first contract to provide statistical and data-management consulting to pharmaceutical clients in 1974, and that Quintiles was incorporated in North Carolina in 1982. That business is what the industry calls a contract research organisation: a company that drug and device makers hire to run parts of their clinical trials.

Quintiles grew abroad early. Wikipedia lists Quintiles Pacific and Quintiles Ireland as set up in 1990, and Quintiles GmbH in Germany and a laboratory company in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1991. In 1996 it bought the British firm Innovex and the American BRI International, and in 1997 it went public.

Its ownership then changed twice. In 2003 the board agreed to merge with Pharma Services Holdings, which took Quintiles private, Wikipedia says. In 2009 the company opened a new corporate headquarters in Durham, North Carolina, and in 2010 a European headquarters in the United Kingdom. In 2011 it bought Advion Biosciences, a bioanalytical laboratory in Ithaca, New York. In 2013 Quintiles returned to the stock market, trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker Q; stock-market profile Stock Analysis dates that listing to 9 May 2013.

The work itself is the work of most large research organisations: planning studies, finding hospitals and clinics to run them, monitoring the sites, managing the data and doing the statistics. Wikipedia lists today’s research arm as covering phase I to IV trial management, clinical pharmacology, regulatory affairs, protocol design, site start-up, patient recruitment, monitoring, data management and biostatistics.

A drug-market audit that began in West Germany.

The data half of the company is older. The International Directory of Company Histories, as published on Encyclopedia.com, says IMS began in 1954 as Intercontinental Marketing Services, the overseas extension of Frolich Intercon International, a New York advertising agency that L. W. Frolich had set up in 1941. English Wikipedia expands the initials as Intercontinental Marketing Statistics, so the two sources differ on the original name.

According to the company history, Frolich had found too little market data about new medicines while running campaigns for drug makers, and with David Dubow, who became president, he formed IMS as a market-research syndicate for the pharmaceutical industry. Its first syndicated study, published in 1957, included a sales audit of the West German pharmaceutical market, built by tracking invoices and stock at pharmacies, wholesalers and doctors’ offices. From an office in London, IMS went on to study the markets of Britain, France, Italy, Spain and Japan.

IMS went public in 1972, and Dun & Bradstreet bought it in 1988, the same history says. D&B began separating its businesses in 1996, when IMS became part of Cognizant Corporation; in 1998 IMS Health became an independent public company, with Cognizant Technology Solutions as a subsidiary. Wikipedia says IMS Health sold its stake in Cognizant in 2003, and that in February 2010 it was taken private by TPG Capital, CPP Investment Board and Leonard Green & Partners.

Collecting and selling prescription data brought legal scrutiny. Wikipedia lists Sorrell v. IMS Health, a case about physician-data privacy that reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in the company’s favour. Wikipedia gives IMS Health’s headquarters as Danbury, Connecticut.

How research organisations present themselves.

Contract research organisations sell a service rather than a product. Drug, biotechnology and medical-device companies hire them to plan and run clinical trials, to test compounds before they reach people, to manage laboratories and to collect and analyse the data that regulators review. Because what they sell is largely invisible, their public image is built from people, places and numbers.

The pictures tend to repeat. Corporate sites and annual reports in the category often show clinicians and patients of different ages and backgrounds talking in calm, well-lit consulting rooms; scientists in lab coats working with pipettes and sample plates; and world maps dotted with the countries and sites where studies run. Data dashboards, charts and screens are common too, reflecting how much of the work is now about managing information as well as patients.

Colour follows the same caution. Blues and greens, from deep navy to soft teal, are frequent choices in health care and research branding, usually set against plenty of white, with a clean sans for names and headings. The aim is to look steady and trustworthy rather than playful, and names are often short, sometimes initials or a single coined word, partly because many of these companies are the product of mergers.

The industry also meets in person. Large gatherings such as the DIA Global Annual Meeting and the SCOPE Summit for clinical-operations staff bring sponsors, research organisations and technology suppliers together, and exhibition stands, panels and presentation slides there are another place where these identities are on show. This guide sets out what can be checked about each company’s history and ownership, and treats every colour and typeface here as our own interpretation.

I for IMS, Q for Quintiles, VIA for “by way of”.

The two companies came together in October 2016, when Quintiles merged with IMS Health to form QuintilesIMS, Wikipedia says. In November 2017 the company took the name IQVIA; Stock Analysis records the change from Quintiles IMS Holdings to IQVIA Holdings in that month. Wikipedia explains the name: the I stands for IMS Health, the Q for Quintiles, and VIA means “by way of.”

IQVIA Holdings is headquartered in Durham, North Carolina, and is listed on the New York Stock Exchange. It reports three segments: Technology & Analytics Solutions, Research & Development Solutions and Contract Sales & Medical Solutions. The research segment covers project management, clinical monitoring and laboratory services, including central, genomic and bioanalytical labs, Stock Analysis says; the data segment sells cloud software, real-world evidence work and measures of how medicines are sold and prescribed.

The company’s website gives its mission as “accelerating innovation for a healthier world” and its vision as “powering smarter healthcare for everyone, everywhere.” It says it has about 93,000 employees and operates in more than 100 countries; Stock Analysis lists 95,000 employees. The site groups its offer under the trademarked name IQVIA Connected Intelligence and also runs the IQVIA Institute for Human Data Science, which publishes research reports.

Not every deal went through. In July 2023 the U.S. Federal Trade Commission sued to block IQVIA’s purchase of Propel Media, a health-care advertising business; a federal judge granted a preliminary injunction in December 2023, and on 5 January 2024 the two companies said they had agreed to abandon the merger, according to Wikipedia.

For a design guide, IQVIA shows how a merged company can build one name from its parents’ initials. Compare ICON, a Dublin research organisation that also grew by acquisition, and Labcorp. For this guide we use navy, teal and a pale mist with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep IQVIA’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.