Can TraceLink Predict Drug Shortages? Answers to Top Customer Questions
Can TraceLink help you predict drug shortages? How is TraceLink helping customers leverage existing investments in track and trace to digitalize end-to-end supply chains? What is TraceLink’s new platform for the Internet of Supply Chains (IoSC)? Customers asked questions about these topics and more after our recent customer update webinar featuring TraceLink CEO Shabbir Dahod—and we’ve got the answers. Continue reading to learn how the TraceLink roadmap and product strategy will impact your organization in the future.
Is TraceLink OPUS a new platform?
Yes, TraceLink OPUS is the new Platform for the IoSC, but it has been built around the Track and Trace Service. OPUS provides enhancements to what you have already implemented by further linking systems, processes, people, and enterprises into a collective information network for intelligent business execution. OPUS and its partner ecosystem builds, manages, and grows digital networks with and among supply chain partners to power the interoperable data exchange required for serialization and global compliance yet introduces new capabilities that provide the collective intelligence needed to predict drug shortages and orchestrate multienterprise processes, enabling you to execute cross-company work and product recalls more efficiently.
The TraceLink OPUS Digital Network Platform allows companies to:
- Create dynamic and secure digital networks to share information with partners.
- Share processes and applications across newly digitalized business networks.
- Drive cross-functional and cross-organization execution with shared but customizable solutions that meet the workflow and data needs of each organization and its partners.
- Leverage a common data model that can take master data from an existing enterprise system and auto-translate the data into a common language for use by partners.
- Generate collective intelligence from the data generated across the network of networks, thanks to shared processes, applications, and a common data model.
Remember, one of the great things about TraceLink OPUS is that it builds on investments you have already made in Track and Trace. As a result, you can fast-track your end-to-end supply chain digitalization strategy.
During the webinar, you often referred to interoperability across multiple solutions. Why is interoperability important?
Because the IoSC connects people, processes, systems, and information across the end-to-end value chain, it’s critical that applications and data interoperate. TraceLink products can be combined in unique ways to solve particular business problems, and they integrate seamlessly together. For example, our approach to DSCSA 2023 combines capabilities from Product Track, Verification Router Service, Serialized Product Intelligence, and Supply Chain Work Management to create a world-class compliance solution that meets all your needs from tracking serialized medicines, verifying saleable returns, and handling recalls, to monitoring the status of your serialized inventory.
How does the OPUS platform help companies that face compliance requirements in an ever-expanding number of countries?
The TraceLink compliance framework is an extension of the OPUS core, which includes integrated track and trace applications. That core provides accelerated solution development so that, as new mandates are announced, functionality can quickly be added to the solution. No-code capabilities combined with a rapid release of standard report types and updated user interfaces enables TraceLink to significantly reduce the time it takes to deploy a new compliance solution for any country you operate in.
How are you able to predict drug shortages?
With your help, TraceLink has created the world’s largest pharmaceutical supply network, tracking billions of drugs as they move through the supply chain. To predict drug shortages, we leverage the collective intelligence capabilities of the OPUS platform. With OPUS all networks are housed on a single platform, and all the data is canonicalized, providing ready access to information that can be turned into insights. Our data science team then applies machine learning and artificial intelligence to this network-wide data on drug movements from manufacturing through the point of dispensing. As a result, TraceLink can predict drug shortages up to 90 days in advance with 80% accuracy across half of the FDAs essential medicines. This is the first of many collective intelligence solutions that will be made possible with OPUS.
How does Supply Chain Work Management help me digitalize supply chain processes?
The Supply Chain Work Management solution is a revolutionary new way to execute supply chain management processes by synchronizing work across multiple levels of supply chain partners. By enabling cross-functional and cross-company tasks, Supply Chain Work Management supports a virtually unlimited number of multienterprise supply chain management processes across the SCOR (Plan, Source, Make, Deliver and Return) model. Built and hosted on TraceLink OPUS, the Platform for the IoSC, Supply Chain Work Management enables customers to create digital networks with partners to exchange business process information through secure, configurable links, and can connect to enterprise systems to accelerate cross-company sharing of interoperable supply chain data. Supply Chain Work Management is the fastest and easiest path to supply chain digital transformation.
Does TraceLink offer lot level reconciliation data and the ability to handle returns in Serialized Product Intelligence?
Serialized Product Intelligence allows customers to operationalize and streamline their serialization processes by providing visibility at the lot, serial number, and serial number event levels, to monitor ongoing activity and quickly troubleshoot any issues or exceptions. In particular, users can review and track changes made to any lot or batch for a given time period across multiple regulatory markets, multiple products and/or contract manufacturers, and drill into specific transactions within a lot to investigate serial numbers tied to individual procedures. This capability will save companies many hours of labor, and the increased efficiency will enable current headcount to support business growth. Serialized Product Intelligence can also be used to manage returns, and all relevant data can be quickly accessed, including shipment and delivery numbers, transaction ID, and PO with original sale price. In addition, by querying the serial numbers of returned products, organizations can reduce revenue leakage by processing returns at the original sale price, yielding cost savings of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
What is TraceLink Solution Designer, and why do you sound so excited about it?
TraceLink Solution Designer is a no-code, UI-driven customization and configuration environment that enables TraceLink, customers, and solution partners, to customize solutions to meet unique business needs while tapping into the rich data, services, and networking capability of the OPUS platform. The application allows business users to extend capabilities with Studio tools that address specific functions. Users can install new services from the library, customize existing functionality by adding new fields, create new workflows, define actions based on explicit triggers, personalize UI screens and navigation, and control access by role and policy to easily scale to thousands of third-party users. In short, Solution Designer allows companies to tailor our products to meet their specific needs while still maintaining data consistency and interoperability with all of their supply chain partners.
