Tag Archives: commissioning

Serial Number Bonding

There are some discontinuities between the needs of the industry for meeting serialization regulations around the world and certain GS1 standards, including their Electronic Product Code Information Services (EPCIS) and Core Business Vocabulary (CBV) standards.  I’ve already pointed out the issue of EPCIS expecting everyone who uses it to possess, by default, a GS1 Global Location Number (GLN) (see “GLN: The Lowly Identifier That Could Kill The Use Of EPCIS For Pharma Regulatory Compliance”).  Here is one more. Continue reading Serial Number Bonding

Decommissioning Under the FMD/EUDR

iStock_83566139_smallerIt is a little surprising that the European Union Delegated Regulation (EUDR) uses a form of the word “decommission” 67 times, but not even once uses the opposite term, “commission”.  Article 3.2(c) of the EUDR defines the term ‘decommissioning of a unique identifier’ as:

“… the operation changing the active status of a unique identifier stored in the repositories system referred to in Article 31 of this Regulation to a status impeding any further successful verification of the authenticity of that unique identifier;”

It is a striking omission to define how to change the active status of a drug to impede successful verification, but to fail to define the opposite operation that sets the active status to enable successful verification in the first place. Continue reading Decommissioning Under the FMD/EUDR

The Coming Battle Over Decommissioning At The Pharmacy

Certificate of Serial Number Death
Certificate of Serial Number Death

The U.S. pharma supply chain will operate under two major phases as dictated by the Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA).  We are now operating under the first major phase.  Well, OK, it won’t be fully operational until July 1st when dispensers (see “Who Is A DSCSA Dispenser?”) are required to begin receiving, saving and retrieving Transaction Information (TI)Transaction History (TH), and Transaction Statements (TS) for each shipment they receive.  Drug manufacturers, repackagers and wholesale distributors were supposed to begin exchanging those documents on January 1st but in late December the FDA issued a draft guidance that indicated they will not enforce that requirement until May 1st (see “FDA Postpones Enforcement of DSCSA Transaction Data Exchange Until May 1”).  But be aware that according to the DSCSA, as of January 1st, all trading partners must be properly licensed and everyone may only buy and sell drugs legally from/to companies who hold a valid State or Federal license.  Those and other requirements of the DSCSA were not delayed by the FDA.

The second major phase of the DSCSA will not occur until November 27, 2023 when the law transforms into something that is fairly nebulous right now.  That is, between now and Continue reading The Coming Battle Over Decommissioning At The Pharmacy