The following is a Supply Chain Matters Guest Posting is contributed by Alex Butler, Medical Device Product Manager, MasterControl
The increase in international sourcing of drug production continues to rise in pharmaceutical manufacturing. With this increase, the FDA continues to document issues with supply chain breakdowns, errors, material quality and numerous other critical issues surrounding these activities. Supply chain issues have been further magnified in recent years as various to the degree that U.S. congressional committees have questioned the FDA in several instances in an attempt to uncover the root cause of these breakdowns.
Supply chain management for regulated companies is historically fraught with challenges, including many catastrophic instances impacting consumers. In 1937, more than 100 people, including many children, died from ingesting Elixir Sulfanilamide, which contained the deadly poison diethylene glycol. This caused President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the U.S. Congress to pass the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FD&C Act) as an effort to prevent future catastrophes.
Leap forward to 2011, when the FDA produced a report titled, “Pathway to Global Product Safety and Quality,” and later, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) tightened their Good Distribution Practice (GDP) Guidelines and the Falsified Medicines Directive to improve supply chain management and minimize risk. At an earlier congressional meeting, the Principal Deputy Commissioner, Joshua M. Sharfstein, M.D., discussed the safety of the drug supply. He said, “Protecting Americans from unsafe or contaminated drugs is not just an important responsibility of the FDA—it is our core charge. Drug safety was the primary reason for the passage of our guiding statute.”[iii]
While problems that arose in the past may have been minimized by regulatory enforcement and the adoption of extensive quality control systems by responsible pharmaceutical companies, the industry is now experiencing a new era of quality-related dilemmas rising in the supply chain. Today, supply chain deviations have become a global threat not only to pharmaceutical companies, but potentially to healthcare professionals and public consumers as well, primarily due to the lack of the establishment of a quality culture in pharmaceutical supply chains.
The “white elephant” that the pharmaceutical industry is reluctant to address is counterfeit medications. Counterfeiting has become a massive issue worldwide. Detection and enforcement efforts are on the rise, and officials, regulatory bodies and watchdog organizations are not necessarily unified on best enforcement practices. Although there are many ways and reasons for why and how counterfeit materials and medicines are breaching the industry, one of the most troubling issues is when materials and ingredients are swapped with materials that are either inert or toxic. In some instances, these have made their way through the supply chain, resulting in harm and even death to patients. To date, these incidents are most commonly occurring in geographic locations like China and India. Because border agents and supply chain managers can’t always tell what’s been tampered with, regulators and governments are demanding tighter controls on the global supply, manufacturing, movement and storage of goods.
One thing is clear: it is the responsibility of pharmaceutical organizations to assume a leadership position in addressing and conquering the issue of counterfeit medicines and the challenges plaguing supply chain management. As the FDA states, the issue of managing a supply chain rests with the manufacturer, regardless of where deviations are generated in the supply chain.[iv]
The FDA’s Focus Shift
Historically, the FDA has focused its enforcement activities, including warning letters, seizures, injunction actions, consent decrees, criminal prosecution and so on, at U.S. facilities. However, recently the FDA’s enforcement focus has included facilities in other countries. This has resulted in a large increase in investigations into high-production countries such as China and India.
The pharmaceutical supply chain represents a new frontier for international enforcement activities. The FDA is beginning to increase its headcount in several countries, which signifies an increased emphasis on enforcement worldwide. Overall, the number of inspections has remained flat, but the investigators are being more thorough and are issuing more violations. Moving forward, we can expect to see continued enforcement against pharmaceutical companies with this heightened supply chain focus.
Supplier Quality Management System (SQMS) Software Solutions Can Help
Quality takes on different dimensions depending on the country in which a product is manufactured. Although nothing can take the place of a staff of quality professionals who are familiar with the regulations and the nuances of supply chain quality management and are well trained on the processes involved, the implementation of an SQMS software solution can be helpful. An automated SQMS can help standardize vendor management processes and can provide efficiencies that give supply chain quality professionals more time—and a standardized process—to minimize the risk of supply chain issues that are breaching the borders and walls of pharmaceutical companies and prevent problems before they arise.
Many organizations manage their supplier quality management processes using a paper-based or hybrid-electronic system. While this system may be adequate and in accordance with FDA compliance requirements, it leaves room for significant errors and substantial inefficiencies.
Top Benefits of Implementing an Electronic SQMS
Although most leading pharmaceutical organizations have transitioned to using a software- or cloud-based SQMS, the majority do not. With the tremendous growth happening in the pharmaceutical industry, small and midsize businesses (SMB) have new opportunities to secure previously unforeseen or unavailable shares of the market with their proprietary drugs, generic drugs and advancements. Unfortunately, the inability to capitalize on these new market shares is often due to the fact that the SMBs have not yet shifted over to a software- or cloud-based SQMS. Here are some of the most mission critical ways that a software- or cloud-based SQMS can mitigate or prevent supply chain problems that commonly lead pharmaceutical companies to deliver or accept counterfeit medicines:
- Maintain All Supplier Quality Data in a Centralized Location: A repository for automating, maintaining and controlling all supplier quality data and documentation – from non-conforming material reports and audit observations to contracts and service level agreements – is an essential component of maintaining security and compliance. A secure, centrally-accessible storehouse allows pharmaceutical companies to more easily and efficiently manage and monitor supplier statuses and ratings, records, corrective actions and approved vendor lists (AVLs).
- Smoother Internal and External Audits: An SQMS can automatically track and store information derived from supplier management audits to help ensure that regulatory guidelines are followed. With an electronic SQMS, pharmaceutical companies can securely store and maintain all information related to supplier management audits, including audit approval statuses, recent data derived from supplier audits and links to quality assurance auditing and analytics reports.
- Improved Communication and Collaboration: All departments involved in supplier management—including authorized external parties—can stay connected across geographically dispersed locations, which facilitates better communication and collaboration with vendors and minimizes complications relating to specifications and materials. In this manner, pharmaceutical companies can gain greater visibility into supplier quality, reduce errors caused by miscommunication and, ultimately, receive higher-quality materials or parts.
No system, paper-based or software-based, is foolproof. However, pharmaceutical companies that implement SQMS software solutions, are seeing meaningful improvements in supplier and supply chain quality issues, significantly mitigating supplier risks, and gaining a higher return on investment for their efforts.
MasterControl Inc. produces enterprise software solutions that enable life science and other regulated companies to deliver life-improving products to more people sooner.
