NEXUS 17 attendees cite information sharing as largest benefit from end-to-end visibility.

TraceLink Inc., a global track and trace network for connecting the life sciences supply chain and providing real-time information sharing for better patient outcomes, announced new industry findings from its annual conference, NEXUS 17.

Interactive polling results indicated that the majority of pharmaceutical supply chain professionals (78 percent of attendees), believe that end-to-end visibility of pharmaceutical products in the supply chain is achievable within the next five years, with information sharing between trading partners cited as one of the most valuable business benefits. 

At NEXUS 17 in Barcelona last month, TraceLink introduced its strategy for leveraging the industry’s only digital supply chain network to facilitate a new era of real-time information sharing, addressing a critical information gap that has existed for decades between pharmaceutical companies, pharmacists and patients.

The first application unveiled within this road map, the Pharmacy Compliance and Digital Information Platform, enables any EU pharmacy to easily comply with verification and decommissioning requirements under the Falsified Medicines Directive (FMD), while simultaneously delivering a real-time dashboard for insights into pharmacy operations and enabling a direct communication channel from the pharmaceutical manufacturer to the pharmacy.  

As the premier venue for the convergence of the pharmaceutical supply chain, NEXUS 17 drew more than 200 pharmaceutical supply chain professionals and business leaders, representing over 120 unique companies from 21 different countries. The conference included educational content from 30 speakers, including esteemed keynote speaker, Dr. Bertalan Mesko—“The Medical Futurist” and experts from Sanofi, Santen, Recipharm, Tjoapack, MIT and the European Medicines Verification Organisation (EMVO).

Attendees participated in live interactive polling throughout the two days, sharing their own insights and perspective on the topics covered in the keynotes, breakout sessions, and roundtable workshops. 

“As serialization deadlines fall into place, now is the time to leverage the foundation of an integrated network in order to enhance real-time communication and information exchange between all of the partners in the supply chain,” Shabbir Dahod, president and CEO of TraceLink, said. “From the very beginning, TraceLink has been architected with true interconnectedness, and by enabling the flow of serialization data between over 260,000 trade partners on our network, is the only provider that can deliver the next step of capabilities by taking information and moving it end-to-end across the supply chain.”

In addition to discussions around achieving benefits beyond compliance, NEXUS 17 attendees also responded to questions about serialization preparation, challenges, and trade partner readiness, indicating the following: 

• Nearly one-half (48 percent) of respondents preparing for serialization indicated they are most worried about the exchange of information. Testing and validation of systems (21 percent) is also a top concern among polling respondents.
   
• The greatest serialization challenge thus far, among NEXUS 17 attendees, has been line vendors’ inability to deliver a solution on time and within scope (47 percent). The second most cited challenge was lack of Level 3 functionality and flexibility to fulfill business requirements in the solution (26 percent).
   
• When asked about relationships with their contract manufacturing organization (CMO) and contract packaging organization (CPO) partners, sixty eight percent of pharmaceutical companies that responded, felt their CMOs and/or CPOs are not well prepared to meet serialization requirements. Eighty nine percent of respondents believe their CMOs should integrate serialization into their current packaging lines with data management.

To access the full polling data results from NEXUS 17, download the Serialization Snapshot: The Current State of Readiness.

(Source: TraceLink)