In recent essays I have covered the “Anatomy of an NDC”, the “Anatomy of a GTIN” and the “Updated HDMA Bar Code Guidance: A Must Read“. Now let’s put them all together. Why would we need to do that? Because the U.S. FDA requires many Over-The-Counter (OTC) and all prescription drugs marketed in the United … Continue reading Depicting An NDC Within A GTIN
In a long awaited and much anticipated move the Healthcare Distribution Management Association (HDMA) published updated guidance for the formatting, encoding and placement of barcodes in the U.S. pharmaceutical supply chain. The document is called “HDMA Guidelines for Bar Coding in the Pharmaceutical Supply Chain 2011”. The guidance is aimed mostly at pharma manufacturers and … Continue reading Updated HDMA Bar Code Guidance: A Must Read
I recently published an essay on RxTrace called “Plateaus of Pharma Supply Chain Security” in which I proposed that a better timeline for the introduction of technology to secure the U.S. pharmaceutical supply chain was one based on plateaus. Each succeeding plateau would add the adoption of new technology and/or data communications among the participants … Continue reading SNI’s Are Not Enough In a Plateau-Based Supply Chain Security Approach
GS1 EPCglobal ratified and published the most recent version of the Tag Data Standard (TDS), 1.5. I have always been a fan of TDS, but earlier versions served as much to expose embarassing disconnects in GS1 standards as they did to explain how to apply GS1 identifiers in an Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) context. Earlier versions of TDS tightly bound … Continue reading Masterpiece: GS1 Tag Data Standard 1.5
RxTrace is now one year old. There are 34 essays that together amount to a true liberal exploration of the intersection between the pharmaceutical supply chain, track and trace technology, standards and regulatory compliance…as promised. My personal favorite essays from the past year, in chronological sequence are: The Florida Pedigree Law (August 10, 2009) The California Pedigree Law … Continue reading RxTrace, One Year Retrospective
In the healthcare supply chain a significant number of hospital group purchasing organizations (GPO’s) have stipulated, to varying degrees, that their suppliers begin making use of GS1 Global Location Numbers (GLN’s) in all of their trade with their member hospitals by the end of 2010 (Sunrise 2010) and GS1 Global Trade Item Numbers (GTIN’s) by … Continue reading So a customer demands that you use GLN’s and GTIN’s. What next?
In April of last year VHA, a nationwide network of community-owned health care systems, published a viewpoint essay on their website called “The Track to Improving Health Care will be Built with IT Standards”. The posting was written by Mike Cummins, Chief Information Officer of VHA, Inc. In it, he draws a great analogy between … Continue reading “Why the rush for GS1 standards?”
Earlier this year The Association for Healthcare Resource & Materials Management (AHRMM) and the Center for Innovation in Healthcare Logistics (CIHL) at the University of Arkansas published the results of a survey they conducted in 2008 titled “The State of Healthcare Logistics”. The survey polled 1381 healthcare supply chain professionals regarding their “perceptions of cost … Continue reading “The State of Healthcare Logistics”
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