Oracle Targets Big Pharma With Serialization App

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Oracle this week rolled out Oracle Pedigree and Serialization Manager, an application that it claims will make it easier for large drug companies to track and monitor pharmaceutical products throughout the supply chain for business and compliance purposes.

Whether it’s a drug recall, a surge in counterfeit medications or an emergency that requires a mass shipment of vaccine to a particular part of the world, large pharmaceutical manufacturers need to have instantaneous access to accurate drug informationthroughout their supply chain.

Last year, California became the first state to require companies provide an electronic, serialized pedigree (ePedigree) of all the drugs sold, manufactured and distributed in the state. Similar requirements and possible legislation, including a proposal by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), is being considered in other states in order to slow the proliferation of counterfeit drugsflooding the market.

Oracle Pedigree and Serialization Manager generates and stores a record of each pharmaceutical product as it moves through the supply chain from manufacturer to distributor and, ultimately, to the retailer or hospital. It includes integrated business analytics to help track sales and product availability as well as automated assessment and reconciliation of products returned against products shipped.

The application is built on Oracle’s core Fusion middleware software and a service-orientated architecture (SOA) to ensure it can be easily folded into any enterprise software platform. It’s also Web- and cloud-friendly with a user interface designed that lets managers quickly view and access the entire life history of any given bottle of medication or medical device.

“Ensuring supply chain integrity is not only about compliance and protecting your brand, it’s also about protecting your bottom line,” said Jon Chorley, Oracle’s vice president of supply chain management product strategy, in a release. “By definitely identifying your products in the supply chain and providing a broad set of analytic insights on that data, Oracle Pedigree and Serialization Manager will deliver both.”

Oracle officials said that while the application was primarily developed for the pharmaceutical industry, it could easily be customized and refined for a variety of industries plagued by rampant counterfeits, including high technology products and luxury jewelry and garments.

Larry Barrett is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of Internet.com, the network for technology professionals.