Domino sponsors major summit healthcare supply chains

The hottest topic in healthcare supply chain management – how best to exploit track-and-trace technologies such as coding, RFID and EPC to ensure security and protect patients – will come under the spotlight at a major conference in Dublin on Thursday, November 30 2006 at IBM’s RFID Center of Excellence.

Sponsored by Domino’s Integrated Solutions Group, ‘Securing the European Healthcare Supply Chain – Where does RFID/EPC fit?’ is presented by the GS1 Europe European Healthcare Initiative in conjunction with EPCglobal’s Healthcare & Life Sciences business action group. 

The event will feature a line-up of high-caliber authorities drawn from RFID/EPC communities on both sides of the Atlantic, including John M. Gray, president and CEO of the Healthcare Distribution Management Association (HDMA), the US’s leading representative body for the healthcare distribution industry. Mr Gray will deliver the keynote address, in which he will provide an update on recent developments in the United States, where the Federal Drug Administration continues to drive progress in key areas such as ‘electronic pedigrees’ for pharmaceuticals to combat the threat of counterfeit products.

‘Securing John Gray as a speaker is a major coup, and testimony to the importance of the conference,’ said Simon King, director of Domino’s Integrated Solutions Group.  ‘Under his leadership, the HDMA has established itself at the forefront of efforts to secure a safe, efficient and reliable distribution network throughout the healthcare industry. Given the central role that US regulators – especially the FDA – have assumed in establishing the requirement for electronic pedigrees to combat the threat of counterfeiting within the pharmaceutical supply chain, no one is better placed to provide an up-to-the minute progress report.’

A complementary overview of what is happening in Europe will be provided by Hugo Bonar, manager of the enforcement unit of the Irish Medicines Board. Bob Celeste of EPCglobal will report on the latest developments within EPCglobal’s Healthcare & Life Sciences action group.

Dr Barry White from Ireland’s National Centre for Hereditary Coagulation Disorders in Ireland will present a vivid example of the potential of track and trace technologies to secure supply chains by explaining the groundbreaking scheme, implemented last year, to deliver 100% track-and-trace of Clotting Factor Concentrates (CFCs) administered to hemophilia patients at Dublin’s St James’s Hospital as well as at their homes in Ireland.

Other key contributions to the conference will come from Tony Walsh of Domino’s Integrated Solutions Group, who will look at the challenges posed for the technology industry by mass serialization, and Christian C. Clauss of IBM’s RFID Information Centre, whose subject will be the use of the EPC network to create and share electronic drug pedigrees in the US.