NDC Ndchealth Corp

ATLANTA and LITTLE ROCK, Ark., Sept. 29 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- NDCHealth(R) Corporation (NYSE:NDC) and Acxiom(R) Corporation (NASDAQ:ACXM) today announced a long-term strategic initiative whereby Acxiom will transform and manage the technology infrastructure of NDCHealth's Information Management business unit. The collaborative project will create a proprietary data factory for NDCHealth utilizing Acxiom's automated grid-enabled information management platform. NDCHealth is a leading provider of healthcare technology and information solutions serving pharmacies, hospitals and health systems, healthcare professionals in medical practices, and more than 100 of the top pharmaceutical manufacturers. NDCHealth's Information Management unit collects data from retail pharmacies, healthcare institutions, and managed care entities in the U.S., and tracks nearly 300,000 drug codes to monitor prescribing activity by over 1.6 million physicians and healthcare providers. The Information Management unit utilizes more than 85 terabytes of unique data assets to offer informatics and decision support solutions enabling pharmaceutical manufacturers to evaluate market performance, more effectively develop and position product offerings, optimize marketing and sales strategies, and better understand the impact of drug therapies. The 10-year agreement will provide an infrastructure that will allow NDCHealth's Information Management unit to develop and deploy new information product offerings within the healthcare industry. The companies believe that pharmaceutical manufacturers, in particular, will be able to benefit from and leverage NDCHealth's advanced analytics, rapid product-to-market execution and improved speed of delivery, in conjunction with the flexibility and power of Acxiom's state-of-the-art data factory infrastructure, one of the world's largest configurable grid computing platforms. "This initiative should enable our Information Management business to rapidly realize our vision of providing the best-in-class informatics solutions to the healthcare industry by accelerating our strategic business transformation," said Michael Weintraub, Executive Vice President and General Manager of NDCHealth's Information Management unit. "We expect this technology infrastructure and data factory conversion to allow NDCHealth to provide enhanced market insight and customer responsiveness as we extend the quality and value of our current customer-driven information solutions. The speed and flexibility we expect to gain should also accelerate delivery of our new solutions. Moreover, we believe Acxiom's unique grid-enabled technology expertise will dramatically improve our data processing and overall data quality, and enable the transformation of our infrastructure as we focus on advancing our Information Management business objectives." "This relationship with NDCHealth represents the third data center re- engineering project we have undertaken using our grid computing technology, and Acxiom now has more than 50 clients leveraging the capabilities of our proprietary grid platform," said Acxiom Company Leader Charles D. Morgan. "We look forward to delivering our unique technology to NDCHealth as they continue to provide vital healthcare information services to the U.S. healthcare industry." About NDCHealth NDCHealth (NYSE:NDC) is a leading information solutions company serving all sectors of healthcare. Its network solutions automate the exchange of information among pharmacies, payers, hospitals and physicians. Its systems and information management solutions help improve operational efficiencies and business decision making for providers, retail pharmacy and pharmaceutical manufacturers. Headquartered at Atlanta, Ga., NDCHealth provides information vital to the delivery of healthcare every day. The Information Management unit, headquartered in Phoenix, AZ., provides information solutions to the healthcare industry. For more information, visit http://www.ndchealth.com/. About Acxiom Corporation Acxiom Corporation (NASDAQ:ACXM) integrates data, services and technology to create and deliver customer and information management solutions for many of the largest, most respected companies in the world. The core components of Acxiom's innovative solutions are Customer Data Integration (CDI) technology, data, database services, IT outsourcing, consulting and analytics, and privacy leadership. Founded in 1969, Acxiom is headquartered in Little Rock, Arkansas, with locations throughout the United States and Europe, and in Australia and China. For more information, visit http://www.acxiom.com/. Acxiom is a registered trademark of Acxiom Corporation. NDCHealth is a registered trademark of NDCHealth Corporation. DATASOURCE: NDCHealth Corporation CONTACT: Jonathan Portis of Acxiom, +1-501-342-6284, or ; or Robert Borchert of NDCHealth, +1-404-728-2906 or Web site: http://www.ndchealth.com/ http://www.acxiom.com/

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