OCI Releases VRS Performance Test Suite to Advance DSCSA Interoperability Efforts
Initial Results from Open-Source Test Suite Confirms System Improvements as Industry Drives Toward November 27, 2024
NEWTOWN, PA, JULY 18, 2024 - OCI members Spherity and LedgerDomain, leading providers in digital credentialing services, together with Engineering Industries eXcellence (Engineering IndX), a global technology provider and consultancy company, today announced the launch of an open-source Verification Router Service (VRS) performance test suite.
The U.S. Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA) requires end-to-end traceability for the vast majority of prescription drug products, preventing counterfeit or illegitimate products from reaching patients. With OCI-compliant credentials, Authorized Trading Partners (ATP), federal and state authorities, and ATP Equivalents can digitally interact with each other, even if they have no prior business relationship and use different solution providers. OCI-compliant credentials integrate with the VRS, a network designed to pass drug package verification requests between trading partners.
As the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)’s DSCSA Stabilization Period concludes on November 27, 2024, the above-mentioned OCI members used their expertise in conducting successful end-to-end Application Programming Interface (API) performance tests to provide the industry with a freely available test harness under OCI’s stewardship.
“Our motivation was to make a uniform and transparent test set-up available to the ecosystem that generates comparable data over time and across solution providers. This harmonization effort builds on the VRS network’s current interoperability and helps solidify its scalability and longevity,” said Dr. Christiane Wirrig, Spherity Customer Success Manager and OCI Policy & Architecture Co-Chair.
“Over the last several years, the VRS has emerged as a key component of DSCSA interoperability nationwide,” said Alex Colgan, Head of Marketing & Partnerships at LedgerDomain and a co-chair of OCI’s Steering and Policy & Architecture committees. “With the VRS performance test suite, stakeholders can compare ‘apples to apples’ and continue the drive towards greater performance and enhanced security, supporting hardworking distribution center and pharmacy employees on the ground.”
OCI’s VRS performance test suite can be used by any VRS provider to run Product Identifier (PI) verification tests, both with and without OCI-compliant credentials. Both Spherity and LedgerDomain tested the scripts with Engineering IndX’s Movilitas.Cloud VRS capability. Their initial tests have already resulted in valuable learnings and system improvements that enhanced performance to bring PI verification responses that included credentials down to an average of 1 second, with 90% of request-response roundtrips taking around 1.5 seconds. Published data are available at OCI’s GitHub repository.
“Our goal is to provide US companies that need to comply with the DSCSA legislation with the tools that make their life easier by having reliable and fast-performing solutions. Our VRS for responders and requesters is optimized to execute transactions below 1 second including ATP credential verification,” said Marc Blekkink, Managing Director Movilitas.Cloud, Industries eXcellence.
As the industry settles into using VRS routinely, service providers will understand the network’s usage levels better and adjust their systems according to load patterns. The OCI VRS performance test harness can help optimize for the most suitable approach to scaling.
About LedgerDomain
LedgerDomain is a decentralized solutions provider focused on healthcare supply chain assurance and visibility. Their XATP solution enables trading partners including global enterprises, health centers, and independent pharmacists to comply with DSCSA requirements for authentication, enhanced verification, tracing, and saleable returns documentation — helping prescription drugs remain safe and effective for patients.
About Spherity
Spherity is a pioneer in decentralized identity and data sovereignty solutions. Their innovative technology focuses on solutions for industry use cases that automate processes by digitizing company or product certificates and the exchange of sensitive industry data. Spherity is offering solutions for the US Pharma Industry, the global automotive industry, and has a special focus on Digital Product Passport Solutions for all ESPR-regulated product categories.
About Engineering Industries eXcellence
A leader in digital transformation, the Engineering Group is a global software maker, a system integrator and a leading provider of technology solutions and services with an annual revenue of over $1.7 billion and around 15,000 professionals across 70 office locations worldwide. Engineering Industries eXcellence, or Engineering IndX for short, is the global division of the Engineering Group specialized in the development, integration and implementation of holistic digital transformation solutions covering the end-to-end lifecycle and supply chain of all industrial products and processes.
Movilitas.Cloud is a next-generation Software-as-a-Service cloud-based software developed by Engineering Industries eXcellence. Movilitas.Cloud helps industrial enterprises digitally serialize, track and trace their products worldwide and across their supply chain networks while ensuring compliance with applicable regulations and industry-specific standards.
