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Posts Tagged ‘NABP’

The “Normal Distribution” Concept

Understanding the concept of “Normal Distribution” is important in understanding the status of pedigree regulations in the United States pharmaceutical supply chain.  The term itself didn’t exist back in the late 1980′s when the federal Prescription Drug Marketing Act (PDMA) pedigree provisions were originally enacted by Congress but the concept is built into that law as the “Authorized Distributor of Record” (ADR) concept.  When states began enacting their own pedigree legislation back in the early 2000′s, the term “normal distribution channel” was defined to describe the path of drugs when they move through the most common–or “normal”–sequence of supply chain owners.  It’s a concept that is explicitly defined in most state pedigree legislation.

When a pedigree law is a “normal distribution” law, it generally means that pedigrees are not needed for any shipment or change of ownership where the drugs do not leave this common/typical/normal path as defined in the law.  But as soon as a change of ownership or custody occurs where the drug leaves this “normal” path, a pedigree is then necessary. 

Typically, when a pedigree is required outside the “normal distribution channel”, that pedigree must Read the rest of this entry »

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About The Author
Dirk Rodgers

Dirk is a Sr. Consultant in the U.S. Healthcare Supply Chain. He contributed to many of the industry groups that were formed to investigate solutions to the problem of counterfeit and other illegitimate drugs in the legitimate supply chain. He served as co-chair of a number of key technical work groups in GS1 and GS1 US. These include the original GS1 EPCglobal Drug Pedigree Messaging work group that created the DPMS pedigree standard, the Network Centric ePedigree (NCeP) work group and the RFID Barcode Interoperability Guideline work group. Dirk holds a BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

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