TraceLink Life Sciences Cloud Is First Compliance Solution to Adopt Pending New GS1 EPCIS Standard for Brazil

NORTH READING, MA--(Marketwired - Aug 19, 2015) - 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 its Life Sciences Cloud platform is the first compliance solution to adopt the new Brazil Traceability Guideline based on GS1 EPCIS standards for the Brazil marketplace. During the GS1 Brazil Drug Traceability Workshop taking place today in Sao Paulo for the Ministry of Health and other supply chain stakeholders, TraceLink is discussing with attendees its commercially available track and trace platform that incorporates the newly developed EPCIS-based implementation guideline to meet the unique track and trace requirements of the domestic supply chain in Brazil -- including support for local identifiers, specific transaction document requirements, and alignment of RDC 54 events to existing global EPCIS events. Release 1.0 of the Brazilian Medicine Traceability Implementation Guide for using GS1 EPCIS is expected in the coming weeks.

Workshop participants are reviewing the new Brazil Traceability Guide, highlighting the leadership provided by TraceLink to extend the GS1 EPCIS standard for Brazil under very tight timelines. TraceLink collaborated with GS1 Brazil and workgroup members from leading global pharma companies, domestic laboratories, third-party logistics providers and local system integrators. The accelerated development effort took place over the last several months, with TraceLink contributing a range of intellectual property including Core Business Vocabulary extensions for domestic requirements and detailed XML use cases that enable pharmaceutical companies, wholesale distributors, pharmacies, and hospitals to successfully exchange traceability data required for Brazil. Elizabeth Waldorf, Director, Global Traceability at TraceLink served as the document editor for the project, following which, GS1 promoted her to co-chair for the Brazil working group that is focused on developing traceability and serialization guidelines for the country.

"The absence of any compliance standard in Brazil has made it extremely difficult for pharmaceutical suppliers to determine how they will be able to meet the aggressive track and trace deadlines the country has set for 2015 and 2016. As GS1 prepares to publish its Brazilian Medicine Traceability Implementation Guide, the supply chain will now have a roadmap to achieve RDC 54 compliance in time," said Shabbir Dahod, president and CEO of TraceLink. "More importantly, the approach we took with GS1 was to ensure that the industry had more than a 'quick fix' for the December 2015 deadline. With EPCIS as the foundation, pharmaceutical suppliers will now have a proven standard that they can rely on for achieving compliance this year and well into the future -- and in a way that is consistent with the increasing adoption of EPCIS as a global compliance standard in multiple geographies."

Early in 2015, TraceLink agreed to support developing the Brazilian Medicine Traceability Implementation Guide as part of its ongoing commitment to offer a comprehensive Brazil serialization and traceability platform. Today, TraceLink has the only commercially shipping solution that supports global standards and domestic supply chain requirements, and also provides the required master data management, serialization and serialized inventory management, and product tracking capabilities to meet Brazil's upcoming phase one 2015 deadlines and the evolving longer term RDC 54 compliance requirements.

To learn more about the Life Sciences Cloud and how to build a flexible, cost-effective serialization and track and trace platform for Brazil, visit www.tracelink.com.

About TraceLink
TraceLink is the world's largest track and trace network for connecting the Life Sciences supply chain and eliminating counterfeit prescription drugs from the global marketplace. Leading businesses, including 16 of the top-20 global pharmaceutical companies, trust the TraceLink Life Sciences Cloud to deliver complete global connectivity, visibility and traceability of pharmaceuticals from ingredient to patient. A single point and click connection to the Life Sciences Cloud creates a supply chain control tower that delivers the information, insight and collaboration needed to improve performance and reduce risk across global supply, manufacturing and distribution operations. Winner of numerous industry awards including the Amazon AWS Global Start-Up Challenge Grand Prize and the Edison Award for Innovation in Health Management, the TraceLink Life Sciences Cloud is used by businesses across the globe to meet strategic goals in ensuring global compliance, fighting drug counterfeiting, improving on-time and in-full delivery, protecting product quality and reducing operational cost. For more information on TraceLink and our solutions, visit www.tracelink.com or follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

TraceLink is funded by FirstMark Capital, Volition Capital and Fidelity Biosciences.