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TraceLink Inc., the World’s Largest Track and Trace Network for connecting the life sciences supply chain and eliminating counterfeit prescription drugs from the global marketplace, today announced that it hosted a successful meeting for the Open Serialization Communication Standard (OPEN-SCS) Working Group. The meeting was held April 11 – 13, at the TraceLink U.S. headquarters in North Reading, Massachusetts.
OPEN-SCS is an initiative designed to enable implementation of efficient, flexible and scalable track & trace programs that can be seamlessly integrated across diversified serialization systems and intelligent devices by leveraging the use of global standards from GS1, ISA and OPC Foundation. Driven by pharmaceutical manufacturers and the serialization solution providers supporting them, the goal of the standard is to enhance interoperability across serialization activities and the systems performing these activities from the equipment level (L1) and packaging line (L2) to site operational management (L3) and enterprise serialization functions (L4).
The OPEN-SCS organization was founded by a noted group of global pharmaceutical manufacturers and serialization technology solution providers, including Abbott, Advanco, Antares Vision, OCS Checkweighers, Omron, Optel Vision, Roche, Systech International, TraceLink, Teva and Werum.
During the meeting, the workgroup continued detailed technical work in preparation for the release of the v1.0 OPEN-SCS standard, including complete user and functional specifications. In addition, the group collaborated on the following:
- Developing information models and testing plans for key use cases including serial number provisioning, unused serial number returns, master data exchange and serialization event reporting;
- Developing 2017 launch and market education plans for initial release of the standard;
- Defining subsequent phases and additional use cases for highly efficient, standardized data exchange between L2, L3 and L4 serialization layers.
“Discussions from our meeting at TraceLink headquarters were imperative in further advancing the v1.0 OPEN-SCS standard and determining plans and prototypes for the four different use cases for serialization that we are currently working on,” said Marcel de Grutter, Executive Director, Open-SCS and Liaison Regulatory and Government Affairs at Abbott. “As a collaborative group working towards the same goal of standardization and interoperability, we are well on-track to meet our goals for the year.”
Interoperability standards form an integral part of the TraceLink Life Sciences Cloud, the only secure and validated cloud solution with a proven network model designed specifically for life sciences companies. Built on the Amazon Web Services global cloud infrastructure, the Life Sciences Cloud supports a variety of widely adopted standards, such as GS1 EPCIS, designed to reduce risk and speed time to compliance for all members of the pharmaceutical supply chain.