Track & Trace

For decades, GS1 has informed global commerce, making history on June 26, 1974, by putting a barcode on a pack of chewing gum. Today, over 40 years later, GS1's global data and identification standards encompass protocols that work with blockchain technology, allowing for logistic documentation to take place on an immutable ledger and eliminating misinformation by distributing this inalterably structured data to enterprise recipients on the supply chain.

According to industry delegates, smaller contract services firms struggling to meet track & trace implementation costs will look to consolidate with competitors in light of impending serialisation deadlines.

GS1 announced a collaboration with IBM and Microsoft this week to leverage their industry standards within future enterprise blockchain applications for supply chain clients. Through the use of GS1 Standards, data stored by planned blockchain networks could be formatted for shared communications and data.

An interoperable system, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said, would help the regulator identify and trace prescription drugs as they were distributed in the U.S. A helpful side effect is that the FDA could then also detect and remove counterfeit, stolen, contaminated or "otherwise harmful" drugs from the drug supply chain.

Industry 4.0 is the next phase in manufacturing. It represents a shift in manufacturing from stand-alone, isolated business processes and systems to fully integrated data and product flows that move beyond a company’s manufacturing plant. Industry 4.0 involves applying new technology innovations to shorten cycle times, improve product quality and implement efficiencies across operations. As a result, manufacturers can be more responsive to customer needs with highly customized products and services on a global scale.

Pharmaceutical serialization compliance will soon be a reality for every pharmaceutical manufacturer. Regulations are already in place in China, Turkey, South Korea and India to name a few markets, and with the U.S. and the EU soon to follow, time is of the essence. In our final blog in the series, serialization director Carlos Machado and our senior R&D product manager Matteo Barbieri, discuss the inevitability and importance of serialization, highlighting the need to establish best practice and the advantages of standardization, flexibility and scalability to achieve short and long-term business benefits.

The regulation is a huge challenge to the industry that requires alterations to their existing production lines and management of vast amounts of new data. Through the year 2023, there is an ongoing series of deadlines which calls for product and package marking, as well as transfer of as transfer of serialization information through the pharmaceutical supply chain.

Patient-centered care is emerging as one of the standards for quality healthcare in the 21st century. Patient-centered care relies upon healthcare provider empathy for the patient, effective communication with the patient, and a true partnership between the provider and the patient focused on meeting the patient’s needs.

“We’ve built a portable spectrometer with high analytical accuracy, deployed the needed machine learning algorithms and seamlessly linked it to a simple mobile app,” said Lee, who holds a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Stanford with an expertise in semiconductors an microfabrication.

A recent report from TMR Research has detected that the market for RFID in the pharmaceutical industry is currently in developing stage, with enormous growth possibilities. The report, titled “RFID in Pharmaceuticals Market – Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2017 – 2025,” notes that the FDA has played a pivotal role in escalating the adoption of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology in the drug delivery market as it helps in strengthening the anti-counterfeiting and track-and-trace efforts.

By now, most of us probably have a vision of Industry 4.0 as a seamlessly-connected industrial world in which everything is integrated. Yet, this dream of universal connectivity and data sharing can seem very remote from the challenges we face every shift, delivering on machine availability, efficiency, throughput, and profitability.

The U.S. prescription drug supply is among the safest in the world, but it can be challenging to keep it that way. Criminals – both here and abroad – constantly threaten to replace safe, effective, and high-quality prescription medications with counterfeit, stolen, and otherwise substandard products.

Data is data, and a blockchain doesn’t care what it contains any more than a file system. The only limitation is in terms of quantity, and this will depend on the specifics of each blockchain implementation. In our platform there’s currently a limit of 64 MB of data per transaction and 1GB of data per block, but there’s no principled reason why these can’t be grown in future. (GG)

If you want to learn more about the blockchain, the technology behind Bitcoin, there is no one more qualified than Don Tapscott, CEO of The Tapscott Group and one of the world’s leading authorities on the impact of technology on business and society, to teach you how this technology works. He calls the blockchain “the second generation of the internet” and claims that it “holds the potential to transform money, business, government, and society.”Have a look at his TED talk and then we’ll dive deeper into this technology’s potential and how it can transform our lives.

Our serialization and track and trace solution is the clear choice for ensuring supply chain security and serialization compliance, including U.S. DQSA compliance, as well as regulations around the world. Building from our roots in pharma, Verify Brand is a quality-focused organization with audit-tested processes. With more than a decade of development, improvement and reinvestment, our serialization and traceability software offers:

The last few years has seen efforts to secure the pharmaceutical supply chain crystallize around the use of unique serial numbers on packs to allow them to be tracked through the supply chain and authenticated before being dispensed to patients.
More than 80 per cent of the medicines sold around the world need to comply with that requirement by 2019 and - assuming those deadlines in the US, EU and elsewhere are met - the industry is on the brink of having greater visibility over its supply chains than ever before.

Boosting its healthcare portfolio with two new mobile handheld solutions to improve clinical mobility workflows and patient care, US-based Zebra Technologies Corporation, the manufacturer and seller of marking, tracking and computer printing technologies, will soon launch its DS8100-HC series scanners and TC51-HC mobile computer for healthcare professionals in India.

Track and trace network Tracelink has released an integrated Compliance and Digital Platform to help pharmacies in the EU comply with verification and decommissioning requirement under the Falsified Medicines Directive (FMD).
The platform, which is expected to be available in 2018, is mobile and web-based and also gives pharmacies a real-time dashboard for business insights on medicine scans, expiry dates, dispensation trends, product inventory and transaction information.

Almost 63% of users of the Internet of Things (IoT) come from consumers, making them the largest demographic to join the trend. This number continues to increase. Gartner estimates that the consumer segment will have as much as 5.2 billion units this year, which accounts for around 63% of the overall number of IoT devices in use.

This month, Kezzler AS, a specialist in serialization and tracking and tracing business services, and SGS, an inspection, verification, testing and certification company with over 90,000 employees, announced they have completed a strategic alliance agreement to jointly market a global serialization and tracking and tracing services system for pharmaceuticals, in addition to fast moving consumer goods, food and food safety, tobacco products, alcohol and other beverages.