OCI members honored by HDA with 2023 Distribution Management Award
March 15, 2023 - OCI cordially congratulates the OCI members and supporters whose tenacious work on a credentialing solution for Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA) Authorized Trading Partner (ATP) authentication has been honored with the prestigious Distribution Management Award at this year’s HDA Distribution Management Conference and Expo. The award is given annually to innovative industry contributions that enhance the efficiency, effectiveness, and safety of the healthcare supply chain.
This year’s award recognizes the achievements of the original ATP pilot participants from the inception of the credentialing idea to its practical implementation and foundation of OCI. It highlights the contributions made by two of OCI’s founding members, Spherity, a leading provider of digital wallet and credentialing solutions, and Legisym, an expert in regulatory compliance technologies for the pharmaceutical industry, in association with the other ATP pilot participants, including the Center for Supply Chain Studies, rfxcel, SAP, Novartis, Johnson & Johnson, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and AmerisourceBergen.
The credentialing solution began as a classic technological innovation project in April 2020. Following that initial industry-wide pilot, OCI has been crucial in galvanizing the community and standardizing the credentialing architecture since its foundation in April 2021. Thus, the innovation has been threefold — at technological, compliance, and governance level.
Robert Celeste, OCI Facilitator and Founder of the Center for Supply Chain Studies said, “Leveraging the W3C standard for verifiable credentials, OCI members have developed a technological architecture facilitating automated real-time ATP status checks between trading partners involved in saleable returns.”
“The solution has been tested with industry partners. Stakeholder involvement is important for us to incubate not only practical novel software solutions but also to set reasonable technical conformance criteria within this ecosystem. These are key roles of OCI.”
The foundation of OCI as a structured collaborative space has attracted more contributors and members, including another digital wallet provider, XATP, and further solution providers, especially those offering Verification Router Services, such as TraceLink, Movilitas.Cloud, Systech, and RxScan. In addition to the growth of the OCI ecosystem, the inclusion of credentials into GS1’s Lightweight Messaging Standard and PDG’s Foundational Blueprint have been major milestones leading up to this award.
Georg Jürgens, Spherity’s Manager for Industry Solutions said, “Developing a solution that increases healthcare supply chain security in a cross-industry pilot has been an incredible journey. With an open and innovative mindset, the pilot group established foundations for an open and interoperable architecture that is adopted across the industry to support the protection of patient health.”
David Kessler, Legisym’s President & Co-Owner added, “Congratulations to everyone at OCI for their commitment and collaboration on establishing this framework. Since its inception, our vision was to not create an isolated solution but to allow for industry-wide interoperability and adoption through an open standardized approach that anyone can participate in. It’s great seeing the OCI ecosystem being recognized and growing.”
OCI’s credentialing framework has enabled the development of commercially available practical technology solutions mature enough to meet the Nov 2023 DSCSA deadline.
For media enquiries please contact Dr. Christiane Wirrig, cwirrig@oc-i.org.
