Trust.Med Aims to Eliminate Counterfeit Drugs from Pharmaceutical Supply Chain

According to the World Health Organization almost 10.5% of the medications worldwide are either subpar or fake. To combat this staggering figure, the Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA) mandates that the industry establish an interoperable electronic system for collaboration between manufacturers, wholesale distributors, pharmacies, and other dispensaries to enable tracking and tracing of serialized products at the package level. 

Trust.med, the medical communication company, announced the launch of its Registry for Contact and Verification, establishing a new standard of digital interoperability in pharmaceutical supply chain collaboration. Using the universal accessibility of the internet, the Trust.med Registry provides a discovery mechanism for contact details, pharmaceutical product data, trading partner locations, and verification information for 35,000 drug products represented by the NDC. 

Trust.med’s Registry for Contact and Verification is designed to keep counterfeit, contaminated, or otherwise harmful drugs from reaching patients and consumers. A recent counterfeiting incident involved the popular drug Ozempic, when a licensed pharmacy unknowingly dispensed a counterfeit of the drug containing insulin glargine rather than the semaglutide found in Ozempic, leading to an adverse reaction in the patient. 

Initial roll-out of the Trust.med Registry will focus on identifying contacts, connecting partners, exchanging critical drug data and enabling authorized product verifications within the pharma supply chain. The Registry will be open to consumers in the future, allowing them to verify the authenticity of their own medications at home. 

“The pressure is mounting for every participant in the pharmaceutical supply chain to be in full compliance with DSCSA requirements. Trust.med has already established the necessary connections and technology to link manufacturers and their solution providers with all authorized trading partners,” says Trust.med Chief Product Officer, John Winkler. 

“Using Trust.med’s Registry for Contact and Verification, manufacturers become discoverable based on their drug product identifiers. All authorized trading partners can verify a manufacturer’s drug products with the two-dimensional barcode,” said Winkler. “The Registry also facilitates collaborative communication between trading partners, regardless of whether or not they have an established trade relationship.” 

Available through an API or by using a web browser, Trust.med’s Contact and Verification Registry: 

• Creates discoverability, answering the questions: Who do I ask? How do I ask? ● Gives manufacturers dot med domains for individual products with easily customizable features for sharing contact and drug product information. 
• Allows pharmacies and other dispensaries to access all drug information using the NDC, GTIN, or 2D Data Matrix to verify products. 
• Enables authorized trading partners to successfully implement data exchange practices in alignment with DSCSA guidelines—including drop shipments (DataX).
• Drug Manufacturers can register their business and update DSCSA contact information by visiting trust.med/registration/.

o Example NDC product listing: 0008-4117-01.med 

o Search the registry by visiting: https://trust.med 

Trust.med handles data transfer, tracking, and compliance required by the DSCSA, so manufacturers, pharmacies, hospitals, and other members of the pharmaceutical supply chain don’t have to. 

Trust.med is a member of the Partnership for DSCSA Governance (PDG) a public-private partnership with the Food & Drug Administration (FDA), the Healthcare Distribution Alliance (HDA), and more than a dozen other thought leaders, technology experts, and stakeholders working on the digitization, serialization, discoverability, and verification of pharmaceutical drugs in the U.S. 

For more information about Trust.med and to use the Contact and Verification Registry, visit Trust.med.