The Business Case For Pharmaceutical Serialization

By Gail Dutton, Contributing Editor

The obvious benefit of serialization, aside from regulatory compliance, is as an adjunct to companies’ anti-counterfeiting efforts. There are many other potential applications, largely focused around supply chain assurance and integrity, but their return on investment often is less quantifiable. Although those additional benefits may filter through the supply chain, pharmaceutical companies currently are focused on serialization’s initial implementation and upon ensuring data system interoperability.

Consequently, developing strategies to mine, store, and analyze data, and then to put that data into context in ways that build broader usability, is a secondary concern. Many executives are just realizing that ePedigree data could be a corporate asset, but even the savviest are still trying to identify ways to leverage that data to support the business units and the supply chain.