Abstract
The key challenge in the Healthcare industry is to trace items from manufacturer to end consumer in the supply chain. The recent fatalities in the food industry led to HR 2751 – the act mandating traceability in the supply chain to ensure quality and safety for the end consumer. In the Healthcare industry, counterfeit drugs pose a major challenge, and may account for 10-30% of the market in developing countries. In recent times, more than 600 medical device recalls were issued for a wide range of items, including implantable devices. This necessitates an efficient healthcare supply chain traceability solution to combat counterfeit drugs and to ensure drug and medical device safety as well as patient privacy. This paper will talk about the challenges related to traceability in Healthcare, and solutions adhering to GS1 standards.
Excerpts from the Paper
GS1 standards provide its healthcare members the process standard for traceability, allocating the corresponding GS1 numbering for devices and location, and other required standard parameters for effective communication across the supply chain. To implement traceability, regardless of technologies used by various stakeholders across the healthcare supply chain, GS1 provides a business process standard which is globally accepted, that uniquely identifies an item and all of the associated events and required records to provide complete traceability.
Organizations around the globe have their own limitations and goals for achieving traceability. There are various factors such as geographical location, their role in the supply chain, and the business they are involved in that could influence traceability. Little awareness exists currently to enable parties to respond immediately in case of a faulty situation. Given the current scenario, GS1 plays a major role in providing global traceability standards and best practices. The primary challenge is in implementing a generic healthcare traceability system that is accept.
