In today’s pharmaceutical supply chain, counterfeit activity is thriving. As pharma companies have expanded target markets and outsourced production over the last decade, the supply chain has become increasingly global, virtual, and vulnerable. Illicit activity has thrived, and patients have suffered, with hundreds of thousands dying each year from counterfeit and contaminated drugs.
More than 40 countries have responded with new laws that regulate prescription medications as they travel through the supply chain. While this is a quantum leap forward for patient health, the implications for supply chain stakeholders, from pharmaceutical companies and their contract manufacturing partners to the pharmacies that serve patients are daunting: they must master each country’s disparate track and trace requirements; create a system architecture capable of generating, managing, and storing what will be unprecedented volumes of regulated data; and figure out how to efficiently exchange that data with hundreds to tens of thousands of direct and indirect supply chain partners.