Verizon Joins Forces With rfXcel to Protect Pharmaceutical Supply Chain

Verizon and rfXcel today announced they're working together on an Internet-of-Things (IoT) platform to monitor the movement of pharmaceuticals through the supply chain to provide traceability deter counterfeiting and help keep patients safe

Verizon and rfXcel have joined forces to deliver the newly available Verizon Intelligent Track and Trace solution, which helps monitor and trace pharmaceutical products in the supply chain and improve overall patient safety.

Leveraging Verizon’s Internet of Things platform ‘ThingSpace’ and its world-class network, the rfXcel Traceability System platform enables pharmaceutical manufacturers to provide real-time monitoring of product temperatures, location and other key product attributes anywhere along the pharmaceutical supply chain. Verizon Intelligent Track and Trace can also create, manage, allocate and store large volumes of individual and hierarchical serial numbers to provide visibility and control and help detect counterfeit drugs more easily.

Verizon’s Intelligent Track and Trace solution will help address some of the pharmaceutical industry’s biggest issues, such as theft, channel diversion, counterfeiting and safe handling. The World Health Organization estimates 10 to 15 percent of the world’s drug supply is counterfeit, with counterfeit drugs in the US approximately 1 percent and in some countries, the estimate is as high as 50 percent. According to American Health & Drug Benefits, the value of the counterfeit drug market is $75 billion annually, leading to more than 100,000 patient deaths.

The solution delivers a host of benefits to pharmaceutical and healthcare clients, including:

• Supply chain management: This IoT technology gives users the ability to monitor, trace and serialize product hierarchies, by pallet, case or individual unit.
• Improve patient safety: Attributes such as temperature, light, location, shock and other key attributes can be monitored in real-time and provide valuable alerts if any attribute changes through the course of the supply chain.
• Facilitate compliance with government regulations: Verizon Intelligent Track and Trace will provide information that when managed by customer’s compliance organization will relate to compliance with government regulations such as the US Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA).

“The partnership between Verizon and rfXcel delivers tight integration between our products and leverages the vast Verizon network to provide unique benefits and real-time monitoring of product to secure the pharmaceutical supply chain,” said Glenn Abood, Chairman and CEO of rfXcel. “We’re both committed to making the drug supply chain safer and more secure for patients.”

“Our Intelligent Track and Trace solution is yet another example of IoT technology at work to solve real-world issues in a simplified way for customers,” added Tom Villa, Director of Product Development at Verizon. “The rfXcel platform seamlessly addresses the current and impending needs of pharmaceutical industry.”

Beyond healthcare, Intelligent Track and Trace technology can be applied to the serialization of virtually any asset, allowing any business with an asset to track to benefit. 

Source: BusinessWire