IT test tool offers a smoother path to product-serialization implementations

Scott Pugh, a software developer with prior experience at Accenture and Verify Brand, has started a consulting company, Jennason LLC (Maple Grove, MN) to execute projects for life sciences companies currently racing to meet the January 2015 initial deadline of the Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA) passed last year. Manufacturers are charged with generated lot-level serial numbers on their product packages, and then being able to verify those serial numbers to downstream trading partners. While there are a sizable number of IT vendors for implementing serialization projects, and a comparable number of consulting organizations providing strategic advice on how manufacturers and wholesalers should go forward, Pugh sees an opportunity in helping get actual implementations carried out.

Thus, Jennason is offering the Serialization Test Tool, a software package that enables systems integrators to run tests of packaging-line IT systems (where the serialization numbers are applied) and then how that output matches up with the GS1 standards for EPCIS-compliant data reporting. Pugh says that there’s a need to develop interfaces to various vendors’ proprietary systems, and Jennason will develop those interfaces gratis for the first several pharma clients to sign on. The tool is being beta-tested with one pharma client currently. The second interfacing issue—EPCIS-compliant reporting—is itself in transition as the GS1 organization adapts its EPCIS standards to the requirements of DSCSA; GS1 came out with an interim standard last month, and Pugh says that he is tracking those technical specs as they evolve.