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                                                                EXHIBIT 99.1

                   PMSI DIVESTS INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHING AND
                             COMMUNICATION BUSINESS


July 30, 1997, New York New York - PHARMACEUTICAL MARKETING SERVICES INC.
(PMSI) (Nasdaq:PMRX), a leading international provider of information services
to the pharmaceutical and health care industry, today announced that it had
completed the divestiture of its international publishing and communications
operation based in the Netherlands.

The company announced that its Dutch and US-based international publishing and
communications operations, PMSI - Bugamor, had been acquired by Excerpta Medica,
the medical communications arm of Elsevier Science, to complement its other
medical and technical publishing capabilities. The terms of the transaction were
not disclosed. PMSI also noted that Excerpta Medica had taken a lease for office
space in PMSI's building in Almere, The Netherlands.

PMSI stated in May 1996 that it intended to concentrate on its core activities
of information services to the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries, and
that it would be divesting its non database segment and its international
publishing business, Bugamor. Bugamor was recorded in the Company's financial
reports as part of its continuing operations and was the second largest of the
businesses to be divested in the program, leaving only IMR, PMSI's French point
of sale business, still to be divested.

PMSI provides a range of information services to pharmaceutical and healthcare
companies in the United States, Europe and Japan, to enable them to optimise
their sales and marketing performance. Most of the Company's information
services are generated from PMSI's proprietary databases which contain unique
prescription, managed care, healthcare market and medical prescriber data.