More than 160 leading manufacturers and wholesalers are partnering with TraceLink to ensure salable returns verification readiness—well ahead of proposed industry milestones. Given the complexity of testing and launching a fully operational verification, industry-wide network before full FDA enforcement begins in November 2020, companies cannot afford to wait to select and implement a proven Verification Router Service (VRS) solution.

TraceLink customers continue to set the pace in VRS readiness:

• Verification at speed and scale. To date, 47 customers have completed testing and are live in production. Taken together, this represents more than 4,300 Global Trade Item Numbers (GTINs) ready to be synchronized with other VRS lookup tables and more than half a billion unique serial numbers uploaded to TraceLink’s Product Information Manager.
• Robust testing for 100+ customers. TraceLink continues to add new and existing customers to its iTest environment, where they progress from basic to advanced testing scenarios, including:
  • Ensuring correct responses and reason codes
  • GTIN (Global Trade Item Number) handling
  • Correct packaging hierarchy identification
  • Lookup directory synchronization
  • Error and exception management
• Successful response testing with wholesalers. TraceLink has successfully completed verification response testing with all 3 major wholesale distributors, enabling TraceLink customers to begin testing their own verification processes and workflows to ensure a smooth ramp-up to saleable returns verification under real-world conditions.
• Driving industry-wide progress. Round-trip request and response testing as well as inbound and outbound lookup directory synchronization has been successfully completed with non-TraceLink VRS platforms, and will continue as other solution providers bring their systems online in 2020.

In addition, TraceLink is connecting its manufacturing and wholesaler customers to begin testing the Master Data Sharing features of Product Information Manager. The ability to provide product master data has been cited by wholesalers as critical to minimizing disruption to their warehouse operations. Only TraceLink offers integrated master data sharing as part of its VRS solution.

What is your plan for saleable returns verification testing?

In November 2019, the Healthcare Distribution Alliance (HDA) reconvened its VRS task force to propose a set of checkpoints for interoperability testing with the major wholesalers before ramping up to full volume by August 2020. Will you be fully prepared to handle the growing volume of verification requests from your direct and indirect partners in the weeks and months ahead—and at full scale after November?

Whether or not you have implemented TraceLink’s serialization solution, synchronizing your data with Product Information Manager is a straightforward and simple process, enabling sub-second verification of your serial numbers—at scale--by supply chain stakeholders. TraceLink continues to lead the effort to establish industry-wide network connectivity, data exchange, and shared business processes as the industry continues its journey towards full unit-level traceability across the supply chain in 2023.