What is EPCIS and Its Benefits in the Pharmaceutical Industry? 

In today’s fast-paced pharmaceutical industry, ensuring that products are genuine, traceable and secure is the most important thing. Welcome EPCIS (Electronic Product Code Information Services), a standardized system for seamless sharing of information about product movements and status in the entire supply chain. 

 

An Overview of EPCIS

EPCIS is a global GS1 standard designed to capture and share information on the physical movement of goods or services through the supply chain. It enables tracking key events, such as shipping at each point where data is captured. Such events also include receiving goods when they arrive from production lines or manufacturing plants. During this process, there is always an associated question with what product was involved, where it was, and why did the event occur? And when did it happen?

 

Advantages of EPCIS within the Pharmaceutical Industry
 

-Improved Tractability

Improved tractability is one of the primary benefits offered by EPCIS in this sector. Through capturing and sharing detailed information about every stage within the supply chain, thus facilitating precise tracing back to their origins, pharmaceutical end users can be identified. This becomes essential, especially considering that product recall and counterfeiting may have severe health issues.

-Efficient Supply Chain

By giving a clear real-time view of product movements and statuses, EPCIS helps streamline operations in supply chains. This eliminates inefficiencies such as redundancy checks as well as manual entry, allowing wholesale pharmaceutical distributors to optimize processes while cutting down costs of operation.

-Meeting Regulatory Compliance

This industry is highly regulated whereby standards like the Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA) in the USA must be complied with. Therefore, EPCIS ensures full regulatory requirements are met by providing accurate records on product movements and statuses hence simplifying audits.

-Stronger Authentication for Product

Counterfeit drugs are increasingly becoming a big headache within this particular business sector. By means of EPCIS drugs could be authenticated since unique identifiers can be used at every stage in the supply chain. This guarantees that just original products shall eventually reach customers thereby safeguarding both public health and brand integrity.

-Superior Inventory

Real-time visibility of inventory as well as the location of goods is provided by EPCIS to pharmaceutical companies for better inventory management. This results in the reduction of overstocking or stockouts, thus ensuring the right products are available at the right time.

-Quick Recall Management

EPCIS enables faster and more efficient recall management during product recalls. It provides detailed information about where each batch has been distributed so that affected products can be identified quickly and retrieved minimizing damage to consumers as well as the organization reputation.

 

FAQs

Q1: How does EPCIS enhance traceability in the pharmaceutical industry?

In any case, every point in a supply chain is touched by EPCIS up to the point where a good reaches its final customer thereby facilitating traceability and guaranteeing the genuineness of products.

Q2: How does EPCIS improve supply chain efficiency?

The transparency provided by EPCIS on movements and statuses of products makes it possible to have real-time data that helps reduce inefficiencies such as duplicate checks and manual input hence enabling improved cost-saving techniques within a given supply chain.

Article Author

Binu .B RPH

President

With more than 20 years of experience in the pharmaceutical wholesale sector, I have Founded and managed several companies, including a pharmaceutical wholesale company, a compounding/retail pharmacy,and many more. As the president of Drugzone Pharmaceuticals Inc., I develop new business and maintain existing business relationships.