What You Should Know:
- The National Association of Boards of Pharmacy® (NABP®) and IBM Consulting are pleased to announce their collaboration to build Pulse by NABP™, a new digital platform that is intended to bring visibility to the drug supply chain and help protect patients from counterfeit or substandard prescription medications.
- Launching later in the summer of 2023, the platform is designed to facilitate manufacturers, wholesalers, pharmacies, and regulators to identify counterfeit or substandard prescription medications and connect with each other when required; provide authorized partners with capabilities to help them accurately trace prescription medications throughout the supply chain; and give patients more confidence that their prescriptions are legitimate.
Improving Patient Reliability and Trust in Prescription Medications
Pulse can help users improve patient safety by assisting them in identifying the threats created due to the ever-increasing complexity of the supply chain, including falsified, substandard, or counterfeit drugs and “grey market” companies.
Pulse is expected to address the urgent and critical industry need for compliance with the United States Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA), which must be fully implemented in November 2023. NABP and IBM Consulting are incorporating solutions into the platform that will address gaps in interoperability identified during workshops and pilots conducted with stakeholders from across the supply chain. For example, trading partners are currently required to participate in “systems of systems” that are often fragmented and focused on single-solution providers. When launched, Pulse is intended to serve as a single, voluntary directory for trading partners. Through this independent platform, authorized trading partners will also have access to product tracing tools, be able to determine the legitimacy of trace requests, and communicate in a mode suited to their needs.
“Patients need to be able to trust the safety of the drugs they’re prescribed,” said NABP Executive Director/Secretary Lemrey “Al” Carter, PharmD, MS, RPh. “We’re excited to launch Pulse by NABP because we believe it can significantly improve the safety and transparency of the drug supply chain in the US, benefiting patients as well as regulators, manufacturers, wholesalers, and dispensers. We selected IBM Consulting as our implementation partner because they have the deep business and product strategy, technology, and industry expertise to help us build and maintain a digital platform that’s secure, user friendly, and can integrate seamlessly with participating organizations’ IT architectures.”
