In a bid to extend its footprint within the pharmaceutical industry, RFID purveyor Acsis Inc. this week announced a new offering that combines software, hardware, and services for pharmaceutical companies that must assiduously track the movements of their products.
The Acsis offering will combine the company's RFID technology and integration expertise with E-Pedigree software from SupplyScape Corp., which acts as a data management system for all of the transactions recorded as part of a pharmaceutical product's chain of custody.
Various state laws require drugmakers to create a transactional record for their products, called an electronic pedigree, or e-pedigree. The goal is to safeguard a supply chain that has been fertile ground for counterfeiting and misdirected product, leaving consumers at the mercy of dangerous, untested substances. In its December 2006 Compliance Policy Guide 160.900, the Food and Drug Administration defined a drug pedigree as "a statement of origin that identifies each prior sale, purchase, or trade of a drug, including the date of those transactions and the names and addresses of all parties to them."
Thus, the manufacturers and distributors involved in getting prescription drugs to pharmacies and hospitals must create ways to tag those drugs and monitor their progress through the value chain, while managing the associated data efficiently.