Expressive RFID data access policies for the

Pharmaceuticals supply chain

Miguel Pardal, Mark Harrison, Sanjay Sarma, José Alves Marques

Consulting

Traceability queries

http://trakchain.net/

US Pharma supply chain

Threats

• Prevent illegitimate products from entering

the supply chain

• Returns of counterfeit or stolen products in

replacement of legitimate products through a

wholesaler

• Criminal wholesalers or

pharmacists/pharmacies.

US Pharma numbers

• 1,400 Manufacturers

• 70 Distributors

– Big 3

• 166,000 Pharmacies

DataMatrix & RFID

• You can have both 2D barcodes and RFID

– GS1 compatibility layer

• Industry has chosen barcodes for

item level identification

Point-of-Dispense Authentication

European model

European Stakeholder Model“ensuring patients have access to safe medicines”

ESM Euro Hub

Document-based electronic Pedigree

“US” model

CA, FL

DPMS

Network-centric electronic Pedigree

EPC IS

Prototype

Data capture screen

Manufacturer viewThe manufacturer can see its own events and

the receiving event of the distributor

Distributor viewThe distributor can see all the history prior to

acquisition of the drug and its own events.

Pharmacy viewThe pharmacy sees all the chain-of-custody

events only for the product they receive

PoD vs DeP vs NeP

Classification

Capture storage

Capture cost

Query cost

DeP required secure connections

PoD and NeP secure connections

Conclusions

• PoD is the most lightweight approach

– stores less information

– limited number of secure connections

• DeP stores the most data

– partial pedigrees

– requires 10 times more secure connections

• NeP is a middle ground between PoD and DeP

– stores more data than PoD

– semi-centralized architecture minimizes secure connections

– same infrastructure – EPC IS and the EPC network – can support multiple applications

– start with PoD and later evolve to full pedigree

Q & A

Thank you!Miguel.Pardal@ist.utl.pt

TrakChain:

Quantifying traceability...