Creating a More Efficient Pharmacy with DSCSA-Powered Automation

For health systems and pharmacies, the final leg of the DSCSA journey comes at a time when demands on pharmacy resources are growing exponentially. In 2024, pharmacy teams spent more time than ever on tasks like:

• Navigating drug shortages.
• Managing time-consuming recalls. 
• Delivering new offerings, like clinical services. 

At the same time, pharmacies are experiencing a difficult job market with few pharmacy technicians available to fill open positions. When faced with skyrocketing demand and limited ability to scale their team, what can pharmacies do? 

The Secret to Delivering More Value with Fewer Resources

When pharmacy demands are outpacing available resources, pharmacy teams need to do more with less. And that means automating as many tasks as possible.

The good news is that DSCSA is a tremendous asset in this regard. The DSCSA EPCIS transaction contains critical information in digital form, like the NDC and Lot Number. When combined with serialized receiving information, new approaches to resource-intensive problems are made possible.   

Recall management is an excellent example of this concept at work. Picture this: What if you had a system that crosschecked data from newly issued recalls against your DSCSA EPCIS data? This system could tell you if any of your locations has received recalled product, where it was received, and in what quantities, all in a matter of seconds. This means no more…

• Sorting piles of recall alerts to see which ones are new and which are duplicates.
• Reviewing purchase orders to see if you received deliveries with recalled product.
• Manually searching inventory looking for product you may not have purchased.

And that’s just in the recall investigation phase. With an interconnected supply chain system for data exchange and the right capabilities, the entire recall process could be handled in minutes through automated digital workflows customized to suit any organization’s processes. 

The Future of Pharmacy Management Is Already Here

This world of hyper-efficient pharmacy automation is already a reality. TraceLink has developed several solutions to help health systems and pharmacies operate efficiently while providing the highest level of patient care. This includes our new Targeted Recalls capability, which digitalizes recall alerts and uses that data to automate recall investigation, as described above.

Should you wish to learn more, please feel free to send me a message. I’m always eager to understand how others in the industry are addressing these complex challenges.