Further Testing & Enhancement Underway in Collaboration with VRS Provider Community
NEWTOWN, PA — February 22, 2024 — LedgerDomain and Spherity, leading providers in digital credentialing services, today announced results from their latest performance testing, exceeding the current Open Credentialing Initiative (OCI) requirements for the U.S. pharmaceutical supply chain under the Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA). Enacted in 2013, DSCSA requires end-to-end traceability for the vast majority of prescription drug products, preventing counterfeit or illegitimate products from reaching patients.
With OCI-compliant credentials, DSCSA stakeholders can digitally interact with each other, even if they have no prior business relationship and use different solution providers. These stakeholders include Authorized Trading Partners (ATPs) as defined by the statute (i.e. manufacturers, repackagers, wholesalers, 3PLs, and dispensers) alongside federal and state authorities and ATP Equivalents.
With 4.9 billion prescriptions filled in the U.S. each year, high performance is essential to ensuring supply chain resilience and security. In rigorous testing scenarios, both LedgerDomain and Spherity demonstrated performance speeds for their VP Generate and VP Verify API endpoints at least twice as fast as the baseline established by the OCI Digital Wallet Conformance Criteria. Under the OCI specification, both calls should average no more than 1500 milliseconds.
OCI-compliant credentials integrate with the Verification Router Service (VRS), a network designed to pass drug package verification requests between trading partners. As the recognized digital method for secure electronic message interoperability, OCI-compliant credentials also integrate with other channels, such as email and Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) for tracing.
Both LedgerDomain and Spherity continue to work closely with VRS partners to further enhance performance times to ensure real-time security and reliability. This broader effort in collaboration with VRS providers encompasses end-to-end performance.
“During the course of the current FDA Stabilization Period, solution providers are tuning up their systems to deliver the speed and reliability that the supply chain demands. We’re collaborating closely with our partners to resolve variations in end-to-end verification performance metrics as the VRS scales up through the spring.”
– Alex Colgan, head of marketing and partnerships, LedgerDomain
“Interoperable networks like the VRS are only possible when all stakeholders pull together. We’re working hard to further scale our infrastructure with minimal latency and maximum throughput.”
– Chris Wirrig, customer success manager, Spherity
“Bringing enhanced drug distribution security under the DSCSA to life has been a decade-long effort, and the VRS is a cornerstone of this interoperable ‘system of systems.’ OCI-compliant credentialing adds a digital layer of secure authentication to the VRS, so that trading partners can exchange data with confidence.”
– Elizabeth Waldorf, Director, Global Traceability and Standards, TraceLink
This progress comes ahead of the upcoming Healthcare Distribution Alliance (HDA) Distribution Management Conference (DMC) in March, where both LedgerDomain and Spherity will be present. For more information on the OCI DSCSA Interoperability Specification and its role in the pharmaceutical supply chain, visit oc-i.org.
About LedgerDomain
LedgerDomain is a decentralized solutions provider focused on healthcare supply chain assurance and visibility. Their XATP solution enables trading partners including global enterprises, health centers, and independent pharmacists to comply with DSCSA requirements for authentication, enhanced verification, tracing, and saleable returns documentation – helping prescription drugs remain safe and effective for patients.
About Spherity
Spherity is a pioneer in decentralized identity and data sovereignty solutions. Their innovative technology focuses on solutions for industry use cases, that automate processes by digitizing company or product certificates and the exchange of sensitive industry data. Spherity is offering solutions for the US Pharma Industry, the global automotive industry, and has a special focus on Digital Product Passport Solutions for all ESPR-regulated product categories.
