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Monday, July 16: With more and more diseases being reported
from all across the globe, concern is centering on how well prepared the
pharmaceuticals industry, the government, and hospitals are to react to
outbreaks. One thing is clear, the supply-chain systems will be the most vital
elements in determining how well we keep this in check and, that would, in turn,
mean making efforts to support the quick and efficient delivery of vaccines and
antibiotics to combat anthrax, smallpox, and other diseases.
In fact, the US government has vendor-managed inventory contracts with drug
manufacturers and medical-supplies manufacturers to manage the buildup of
antibiotics and other necessities in eight warehouses around the country to help
in the fight against bio terrorism, Already the hospital personnel make rounds
to every floor of each of the 10 hospitals in New York city about every four
hours to count the drug supplies that have been used since the last round. This
data is recorded by a handheld computer, transmitted to a dedicated PC in each
hospital, and sent via electronic data interchange to Allegiance Corp., which
books the order and routes it in real time to a Romulus, Michigan warehouse.
There, an automated inventory picking system pulls each item in each hospital's
order and stacks it in a sequence that lets high-priority items be pulled first
and delivered immediately.
However, none of these efforts will really pay unless the pharmaceutical
companies don't have the manufacturing and IT systems in place to quickly
produce and track antibiotics on a large scale. Bayer Corp., maker of the
anthrax-fighting antibiotic Ciprofloxacin, has shipped 50 million Cipro tablets
in the past month, more than twice its monthly average. It's looking at tripling
manufacturing and packaging capabilities to meet the government's demand of 200
million Cipro tablets over the next three months. Bayer said last week that it
would consider seeking help from competitors to handle the demand.
Although the pharmaceutical companies are not very clear as to what could be the
possible role of IT systems in these efforts, there are few who claim that with
an ever-increasing demand the drug manufacturers are likely to work on
inventory-management systems so they can ship medications as soon as they're
manufactured (rather than test each batch for quality first), mark them as
quarantined at the warehouse, and then notify the government when testing is
complete so that the quarantine can be finally lifted.
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IT
