Category Archives: supply chain security

The Supply Chain Provisions Of The FDA Safety & Innovation Act

Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, President Barack Obama, Representative Nancy Pelosi
Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, President Barack Obama, Representative Nancy Pelosi

Last fall the U.S. Congress passed the Food and Drug Administration Safety and Innovation Act, or FDASIA, and the bill was signed into law by President Obama.  The purpose of the legislation was primarily to re-authorize user fees that are paid by manufacturers of drugs, medical devices and biologics, but the law also contains quite a few other things.  Readers of RxTrace will recall that the well-organized attempt to add a nationwide track & trace requirement to the bill failed (see “PDUFA Will Not Include RxTEC”), but a number of very significant supply chain security elements did make it into the law under the title “Title VII—Drug Supply Chain” (see the full text of the law here).  A closer look at these provisions is long overdue. Continue reading The Supply Chain Provisions Of The FDA Safety & Innovation Act

Illegitimate Drugs In The U.S. Supply Chain: Needle In A Haystack

West-African countries have been under attack by drug counterfeiting criminals for decades with little resistance until the last one.  The result, in 2002 Mohammed Yaro Budah, then president of the Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria, estimated that 70% of the drugs in Nigeria were fake or substandard.  That’s an incredible figure, but starting around that time the Nigerian National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) under the direction of Professor Dora Akunyili began fighting back.

Initially they focused on inspecting drug imports at the Nigerian ports and airports and they were able to bring the percentage of fake or substandard drugs to come down considerably.  More recently they have begun employing a number of Raman Spectroscopy-based devices called TruScan (recently acquired by Thermo Scientific) to inspect drugs and anti-viral medicines being sold in pharmacies during “unscheduled” visits.

Even more recently, a number of pharma manufacturers have begun to add low cost scratch-off stickers to the drugs sold in Nigeria that cover a random number that can be scratched off and checked for authenticity by patients and healthcare professionals using SMS text message-based technology from Sproxil.  The service was launched in 2010 on a single product but that number is growing quickly as a number of large U.S.-based drug companies add the scratch-off stickers to their productsThe service is sponsored by NAFDAC.

WOULD THESE TECHNOLOGIES WORK IN THE U.S.?

That is, would these technologies help to reduce the number of illegitimate drugs in the U.S. supply chain? I believe that the answer is Continue reading Illegitimate Drugs In The U.S. Supply Chain: Needle In A Haystack

Supply Chain Data Synchronization and Patient Safety

Does the supply chain itself make any contribution to patient safety?  The legitimate pharmaceutical supply chain is that complex web of companies that move drugs from the manufacturers to the pharmacies that dispense them to patients.  The supply chain always includes both of those end points (manufacturer and pharmacy) and, in the U.S., normally also includes at least one wholesaler.  The supply chain is typically viewed as “Manufacturer to Wholesaler to Pharmacy”, whether the pharmacy is within a hospital, clinic, retail independent, chain store, grocery store, or mail order.  The great majority of prescription drugs arriving in the hands of U.S. patients have passed through this supply chain.

So what contribution does this chain make toward the safety of those patients?  In my view, it comes in three ways: Continue reading Supply Chain Data Synchronization and Patient Safety

Who’s Responsible for Global Supply Chain Security?

My favorite pharmaceutical supply chain blog is DrugChannels by Dr. Adam J. Fein (PhD). Dr. Fein started his blog in May 2006. I became a subscriber and regular reader sometime later that year. The focus of DrugChannels is “Pharmacy economics and the pharmaceutical supply chain”, which has often included very rational opinions on the economic viability of various pedigree laws.

My RxTrace blog has only been around for a short time and its focus is “the intersection between the pharmaceutical supply chain, track and trace technology, standards and regulatory compliance”. This is almost the inverse of DrugChannels. I’d like to think they are complementary but I suppose we can’t judge that until I generate quite a few more posts. Either way, I owe quite a lot to Dr. Fein and DrugChannels because they provided me the inspiration for starting this blog.

In a recent email exchange, Dr. Fein drew my attention to the FDA document, “Safer Medical Products: Investments for Supply Chain Safety and Security”, a 22-page apparent explanation for an increase of $166,433,000 and 346 FTE’s in the FDA’s FY 2010 budget proposal. Part of the increase “…includes investments that will allow FDA to implement new approaches to effectively regulate the safety and security of the supply chain of medical products …”. “Medical products” include human drugs, vaccines, blood and other biological products, medical devices, animal drugs and medicated feed.

New Approaches

The biggest driver of the need for the increase is the rapid globalization of the supply chain for medical products that end up in the medicine cabinets of Americans.

“The priorities proposed in this initiative will assure the safety and security of foreign and domestic sources of ingredients, components, and finished products at all points in the supply chain…”.

“Supply Chain Safety and Security relies on risk-based prevention with a verification-focused approach to hold all segments of industry accountable for ensuring that their products meet U.S. safety standards, with FDA verifying compliance with standards.”

“FDA will increase medical product safety and security by enhancing oversight of entities in the supply chain.”

The proposal promises to hire more experts and modernize FDA information technology. But it also includes funds to fight internet drug fraud, and to allow FDA to develop policy options related to drug importation.

“FDA will develop policies to implement the Administration’s policy of allowing Americans to buy safe and effective drugs from other countries.”

So is the FDA Responsible for Global Supply Chain Security?

Lots of interesting content for everyone to mull over. Daniel R. Matlis, president of Axendia, has done just that in a post on the PharmTechTalk blog. In his post he uses the FDA document to question whether securing the global medical products supply chain should be the FDA’s responsibility or the industry’s. It’s an interesting question and Matlis juxtaposes the FDA paper against comments reportedly made by Gerald Migliaccio, Vice President of Quality, EHS and Agility at Pfizer Global Manufacturing at a recent joint session of the PharmTech Conference and the Manufacturing Execution System in Life-Sciences Congress. Migliaccio believes that, “Supply chain security is the responsibility of all parties involved in procurement/ sourcing, manufacturing, packaging and distribution of raw materials, intermediates and final product.”

Matlis concludes that industry and regulators have different roles in securing the supply chain and that we all benefit by their efforts. After raising such a provocative question, I felt let down by such a milquetoast conclusion. Like Gerald Migliaccio, I believe the responsibility for supply chain security falls squarely on every participant in that chain, global or domestic. FDA is an arm of our government—that which is of, by and for…us, the consumers, the patients. To me, it seems backwards to make the consumer/patient responsible for the safety and security of the supply of products that are advertised as being safe and beneficial to our health and wellbeing.

I’m not arguing against the existence of the FDA, only the argument that it is up to the FDA to ensure the safety and security of the supply chain. What we need from the FDA are standards that ensure that illegitimate supply chain activity can be detected automatically by the supply chain participants themselves. Arming each buyer in every purchase transaction in the supply chain with the means to reliably, quickly and independently verify each prior transaction back to the original manufacturer would accomplish exactly that. I’ll explain how that can be done in future posts.