Tag Archives: track and trace

Global Alignment

The Future of Healthcare Supply Chain Security

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Businessman looking through binocularsLet’s take a brief pause from our in-the-moment work on meeting today’s healthcare supply chain security needs and consider what the supply chain will look like in the future.  Because of regulations and laws enacted in 2012 and 2013 in the U.S., and expected in 2014 in the E.U., we know more today about how healthcare supply chain security will work In 2024 than looking forward in any previous 10 year period.  In the last two years the U.S. and the E.U. have enacted legislation and introduced regulations that will have a profound impact on the security of these major supply chains in ten years.  These include:

Continue reading The Future of Healthcare Supply Chain Security →

DQSA of 2013

DQSA: Dancing Around The Returns Problem

Dancing.iStock.612379There is an interesting dialog going on in the Food and Drug Serialization Professionals group in LinkedIn that was kicked off by a recent RxTrace essay.  Click here to see the conversation.  It got real interesting when Marc Rosenblatt, Director of Sales at Veracity Network, related an experience his company had in a recent pilot.  He said:

“…An unsettling example occurred during one of our distributor pilot programs. Our system detected a number of counterfeit products (9% of the total sample to be exact) that were sent back as returns. This means that the molecular structure or product signature didn’t match up with the legitimate product standard. Upon further examination, it was discovered that the sealed bottles contained counterfeit replacements for the valid product. What makes this even a more difficult pill to swallow (pun intended) is the fact that these products would in most cases be restocked and sold again. The returns areas are the most overlooked link in the supply chain and from reading the DSCSA text, it continues to be (at least for the next 4 years).”

Marc’s reading of the Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA), which is Title II of the Drug Quality and Security Act (DQSA), gives him some comfort Continue reading DQSA: Dancing Around The Returns Problem →

DQSA of 2013

DQSA: Will U.S. Pharma Distributors Mandate Aggregation Data In Phase 1?

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worker with stacker at warehouseI attended the Healthcare Distribution Management Association (HDMA) Track and Trace Seminar held in Crystal City, VA on November 11-13, 2013.  I was particularly interested in the session called “Distributor Case Studies and Updates”, as were a lot of other people.  The speakers were:

Each speaker gave a brief presentation about their current serialization and pedigree programs before taking questions as a panel.  As you would expect, all of the preparation these companies have done up to this point has been aimed squarely at the California pedigree law which would have gone into effect for wholesalers in California in mid-2016.  But, Continue reading DQSA: Will U.S. Pharma Distributors Mandate Aggregation Data In Phase 1? →

DQSA of 2013

DQSA: Getting To Electronic Transaction Data Exchange

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Files transfer.While we wait for President Obama to sign the Drug Quality and Security Act of 2013 (DQSA, a.k.a. H.R. 3204) we can be confident it will become law in the next week or so.  This President has been presented with over 740 bills so far in his Presidency and he has signed all but two.  He has 10 days to sign the bill or it becomes law anyway but there might be some delay in the process between passage by the Senate and when the President is presented with the bill.

My interest in the DQSA of 2013 is only the Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCS) which is Title II within the overall bill.  I’m going to keep referring to it as the DQSA of 2013 but be aware that I probably won’t ever write about the compounding part, Title I.  If that is what brought you here, sorry, look elsewhere.

It is not law yet, but we can now be 100% sure it will be very soon.  Even before the bill was Continue reading DQSA: Getting To Electronic Transaction Data Exchange →

FDA

InBrief: Comments on H.R. 3204 by FDA’s Dr. Ilisa Bernstein at PSM Interchange 13

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PSM mug logoDr. Ilisa Bernstein, Pharm.D, JD, Deputy Director of the U.S. FDA Office of Compliance in the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER), delivered the keynote address at yesterday’s Partnership for Safe Medicines (PSM) Interchange 2013 event (see “Dr Ilisa Bernstein of FDA CDER Office of Compliance To Keynote PSM Interchange”).

Her presentation covered the full range of activities that the FDA is currently pursuing to improve the security of the U.S. pharmaceutical supply chain, including their efforts to implement the new powers they were given by Congress in last year’s FDA Safety and Innovation Act (FDASIA).  Continue reading InBrief: Comments on H.R. 3204 by FDA’s Dr. Ilisa Bernstein at PSM Interchange 13 →

serialization

Eli Lilly: “Serialization Needs Standardization”

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David Colombo of Eli LillyLast month, Eli Lilly posted a video about their serialization initiative on YouTube.  It features Grant Lindman, Manager of Lilly’s Global Anti-Counterfeiting Operations, and David Colombo, Commercial Implementation Leader of Lilly’s Global Serialization Program talking about their global serialization program.  It is worth a listen. Continue reading Eli Lilly: “Serialization Needs Standardization” →

EPCIS

Will Use Of EPCIS Force Everyone To Use GS1 Identifiers?

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EPCISOver the last five years the larger companies in the U.S. pharmaceutical supply chain have increasingly aligned around GS1’s Electronic Product Code Information Services (EPCIS) standard for holding and communicating serialization-based events.  The hope and expectation by many of these manufactures and others in the supply chain is that EPCIS will be the standard that ensures supply-chain-wide interoperability in any future track and trace or ePedigree system that the federal government might impose.  On its surface it appears that EPCIS is designed around GS1’s family of serialized identifiers, which are based on GS1’s GS1 Company Prefix (GCP) (see “Anatomy of a GTIN” and “Your GS1 Company Prefix: An Enterprise Resource“).  This includes Continue reading Will Use Of EPCIS Force Everyone To Use GS1 Identifiers? →

California Pedigree Law, Federal Pedigree

California, Congress and The Choices We Are Forced To Face

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The Thinker statueImportant Notice To Readers of This Essay On November 27, 2013, President Barack Obama signed the Drug Quality and Security Act of 2013 into law. That act has many provisions, but one is to pre-empt all existing and future state serialization and pedigree laws like those that previously existed in California and Florida. Some or all of the information contained in this essay is about some aspect of one or more of those state laws and so that information is now obsolete. It is left here only for historical purposes for those wishing to understand those old laws and the industry’s response to them.Another week has gone by with no official movement in the Senate on the compromise pharmaceutical compounding and track & trace bill, H.R. 3204, the Drug Quality and Security Act (DQSA) (see “Waiting For The Senate To Act On A Track & Trace Bill, Again”).  With the focus of the Congress rightly on reopening the government I think we should expect to wait a little longer.  You can bet that the supporters and the opposition are both developing their strategy as time goes by.

I attended the GS1 Global Healthcare Conference in San Francisco last week and it was a great opportunity to reconnect with a lot of people I have worked with over the years on defining workable standards for healthcare supply chain data exchange.  Some of us are Continue reading California, Congress and The Choices We Are Forced To Face →