WALLDORF — SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) today announced the completion of an industry-wide pilot utilizing self-sovereign identity (SSI) credentials to establish trust in the pharmaceutical supply chain for indirect trade relationships.
The pilot is the first step toward establishing an industry-wide standard that will mitigate the risk of noncompliance for pharmaceutical companies.
The U.S. Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA) requires stakeholders in the pharmaceutical supply chain to interact with other entities for product verification and tracing even when they do not have a direct business relationship. DSCSA also requires such interactions to be limited to authorized trading partners.
One of the legal requirements of DSCSA is the verification of salable returns. This process is already established and supported by SAP Information Collaboration Hub for Life Sciences, which executes tens of thousands of verifications every month. In order to provide our customers with the best solution for compliance with verifying the identity and authorized trading status of partners, SAP chose an open, interoperable technology to validate all stakeholders in the pharmaceutical supply chain, including competitors.
Together with SAP partner and wallet provider Spherity GmbH, verifiable credentials issuer Legisym LLC, and leading pharmaceutical manufacturers and U.S. wholesalers, as well as other serialization solution providers, SAP proved the ability of SSI to validate authorized trading partner status in indirect trade relationships as they occur during verification of product packs as required by U.S. legislation.
“The inability to verify the identity and authorized trading partner status of companies requesting verification put us at risk for noncompliance” said Dave Mason, Novartis Americas Supply Chain Compliance and Serialization lead. “The use of verifiable credentials ensures that we can establish trust across the supply chain and that we comply to the letter of the law.”
As early as May 2021, this functionality will be available to existing customers of the SAP Information Collaboration Hub for Life Sciences, to help ensure customers can achieve compliance quickly. To drive the utilization of SSI technology across the industry, SAP also plans to participate in the newly founded Open Credentialing Initiative (OCI).
“Digital transformation is critical for the life sciences industry to be able to quickly and effectively address public health needs,” said Matt Laukaitis, SAP Consumer Industries global general manager. “This work is yet another example of SAP’s leadership with the life sciences ecosystem of partners and customers to address their industry-specific solution requirements. By establishing an efficient process for transmitting and verifying authorized trading partner status, the supply chain is more safe and secure.”
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