TraceLink Inc., the world’s largest track and trace network for connecting the life sciences supply chain and eliminating counterfeit prescription drugs from the global marketplace, today announced that Sharp Packaging Services (sharpservices.com) has purchased a range of serialization solutions from the company in order to prepare for the next phase of rapidly approaching requirements under the U.S. Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA).  As the preferred serialization solution provider for Sharp's commercial packaging and clinical services business in the U.S., UK and Europe, TraceLink will help eliminate point-to-point integration complexities and reduce business risk for Sharp's extensive pharmaceutical customer base.

“We needed a cost-effective track and trace solution provider that was proven in ensuring supply chain protection and risk mitigation, with the agility to quickly connect and validate the brands within our infrastructure,” said Rick Seibert, SVP Innovation and Technology at Sharp. “Our partnership with TraceLink demonstrates Sharp’s ongoing commitment to deliver on its mission of providing quality products and services to our customers, while complying with the most demanding global and U.S. requirements for drug serialization.”

“Sharp is a forward thinking industry leader for serialization and recognized the critical need to migrate from its point-to-point serialization system to an interoperable, integrate-once network platform with Tracelink, in order to be fully prepared for the next phase of DSCSA,” says Shabbir Dahod, president and CEO of TraceLink.  “As the only digital supply chain network solution that provides scalability at the operational level, TraceLink was chosen by Sharp to help maintain their global efficiencies, keep costs low and meet the complex compliance demands of their growing customer base.”

In November 2017, DSCSA regulations will require the serialization of all drug products and enhanced verification of product identity by pharmaceutical companies and their CMO/CPO partners. These impending requirements pose considerable data management and business process challenges for organizations that do not have a comprehensive serialization strategy and agile enterprise architecture.  TraceLink’s Life Sciences Cloud enables customers like Sharp Packaging Services, to leverage a network-centric serialization infrastructure that minimizes connections and maximizes reuse of resources across a diverse customer base.

Sharp Packaging Services is an international leader in contract packaging and clinical supply chain services that provides unique, innovative and often complex, commercial and clinical services to the life sciences industry. Sharp is known throughout the industry for its ability to design and engineer customer packaging solutions while maintaining the highest quality and service and maintains an exceptional global reputation for the design, serialization and production of innovative, cost-effective compliance packaging for the most complex products.