IPC Saves $1 Million Developing Drug-Tracking System with iWay Software

08/27/2008

iWay Software, an Information Builders company and an innovator of enterprise integration solutions, today announced that IPC, the nation's largest group purchasing organization for independent pharmacies, used iWay Software to meet drug tracking requirements in complete compliance with U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) standards.

ebizQ received the following:

IPC completed the project for a fraction of the cost of deploying a packaged e-pedigree solution, and well in advance of an imminent FDA deadline.

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IPC is responding to FDA requirements designed to curb pharmaceutical drug counterfeiting. Last year, the FDA announced that drug wholesalers must track the pedigree of all pharmaceutical products dispensed in their retail pharmacies. Meeting this requirement meant IPC had to create a tracking system that could account for each bottle of drugs that passes through its warehouses with a consequent impact on many of its core information systems.

IPC used iWay Service Manger to integrate important pharmaceutical data with its back-office information systems. It now maintains a pedigree for each bottle of pharmaceuticals, including all pertinent dates, the names of each party involved, and the addresses of key transactions, as regulated by the FDA.

"Without iWay, we might have been forced to go out of business, or do business entirely differently," said James Blake, vice president of Information Technology at IPC. "In 14 weeks we had a complete e-pedigree system in place, and it is integrated with all of our legacy systems. We've easily saved $1 million in development dollars in a relatively short timeframe. More importantly, we were able to meet federal requirements that we couldn't have met otherwise."

With its new e-pedigree system in place, IPC can manage, route, and store electronic documents that detail the chain of custody for its pharmaceuticals. There are many different protocols involved, such as FTP and AS2, and many different routing rules for the documents. IPC used iWay to translate the routing rules and streamline the information workflow via XML standards.

Today, when pharmaceutical wholesalers send product data to IPC, the drug tracking system automatically ties that data to a purchase order. iWay matches the purchase order with a shipping notice, then sends back a confirmation of the transaction. After the wholesaler verifies that the correct manufacturer is listed, IPC updates its pharmaceutical database. Thanks to this automated business flow, IPC knows the exact pedigrees of the drugs that it has purchased before the products even arrive at its shipping dock. In turn, they are able to provide this information to their individual pharmacies, fulfilling the FDA requirement.

In addition to the e-pedigree system, IPC is using iWay to streamline e-commerce and data interchange requirements, ensuring secure transport of data to its business partners. Ultimately, the company plans to use iWay to create a single framework for all data coming into and going out of its information systems, including orders, report requests, and pedigree information. IPC is also using iWay to streamline the deployment of a new ERP system by mirroring transactions in its legacy systems.

"Standardizing on iWay has positioned IPC to replicate just about any process flow extremely easily," said John Senor, president of iWay Software. "Because iWay has such a high-level object-oriented design process, developers can develop new interfaces very rapidly, with little or no code."

While many companies use iWay as a universal platform for mapping dissimilar data types and facilitating efficient data interchange, IPC also relies on the software as a business process control agent. IPC plans to use iWay to control the flow of orders between its AS/400 environment and its Microsoft .NET environment, as well as to simplify the process of incorporating radio frequency identification (RFID) identifiers into its distribution systems. IPC recently purchased Information Builders WebFOCUS BI platform, which it plans to use to expand its operational reporting capabilities.

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