Drug manufacturer Pfizer Inc., IBM and Microsoft Corp. are forming a joint venture aimed at developing software and services to cut the amount of administrative paperwork in doctors' offices, the companies said last week. The as-yet-unnamed company will focus on reducing costly administrative work for physicians, such as insurance claims, the companies said in a statement. It will market its products to doctors in small group practices, which represent 70% of the office-based doctors in the U.S. The firms didn't say how much capital each would invest in the deal.

Buyers Spent $3.4B Online in February

Despite the current economic slowdown, consumer online spending increased substantially in February from January as well as from the same period a year earlier, according to a study by Forrester Research Inc. in Cambridge, Mass. The study, released last week, found that consumers spent nearly $3.4 billion in February compared with $3 billion in January. That was a sharp gain from the $2.4 billion spent online in February 2000.

Short Takes

PC vendor Gateway Inc. has closed 27, or about 8%, of its Gateway Country stores in the U.S. in an effort to cut costs. . . . Internet Initiative Japan Inc., Cisco Systems Inc. and Oracle Corp. Japan announced plans to develop a robust multimedia content delivery platform in Japan. Trials of the new service, CDN Japan, will begin this month and are expected to last about a year before a commercial launch. . . . There were 1,501 mass layoffs (50 or more employees) nationwide in February, according to data released last week by the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics. The total number of individual layoffs for the month was 172,908. . . . IBM last week strongly denied European media reports that it plans to absorb the corporate identity and staff of Lotus Development Corp., saying that it's still studying what to do with its groupware subsidiary.

Computerworld