Customer

The Customer is a multinational pharmaceutical company with operations in over 100 countries, 80+ years of experience and $15+ bln revenue. It provides caregivers and patients with lifesaving oncology, renal and transfusion medical products. With extensive experience in drug research and development, the Customer supports care providers in their mission to deliver quality care across hospitals, clinics, assisted living facilities and patients’ homes. Challenge

The Customer needed a centralized solution to cover generic and non-generic short-living chemotherapy drugs and TPN production (such as cyclophosphamide, 5-FU, cisplatin and more), stock control, client information and financial transactions (direct sales). This solution was to be used not only at the organization, but also at its medical customers’ facilities.

The previous Customer’s system was outdated, unreliable and costly to maintain. It included two separate ‘dispensing pharmacy’ and ‘total parenteral nutrition’ modules, which were to be supported and updated manually. Besides, this system was non-scalable, which impeded the Customer’s further business growth. The ordering process was carried out via such outdated media as fax and phone. Moreover, the solution was not in compliance with the newest GAMP4 standards and requirements.

Therefore, the Customer requested to rebuild the system to make it scalable and easily updateable. The new solution was to align separate modules, create the then missing ordering, invoicing and reporting functionality to deliver the full-cycle system capable of safeguarding manufacture of first-line oncology drugs and TPN medications. Solution

The Customer chose a .NET platform for implementation of the new integrated system. The server application and clients interact via .NET web-services. The solution consists of the following modules: Data maintenance

This module contains a database storing the system objects such as hospitals, patients, orders, batches, order status and more. Production

The production module covers the full process of medicine manufacturing: drug order and recipe entry, entry review, pre-compounding, compounding, post-compounding, labeling, release and delivery. Let’s review how this module works.

For example, the new system is installed at a hospital’s dispensing unit. This hospital’s physician prescribes an oncology drug for a particular patient. Then this physician or a pharmacist uses the system to enter the order and send it to the factory closest to their location.

The factory receives the order, and the software automatically performs the validity check to make sure the recipe is adequate, the dose is right and components are relevant. The system can also plan the medication production for the whole course of treatment after one order. It calculates the quantity of doses for, say, a 6-week course and schedules specific dates for each dose preparation and delivery.

On the pre-compounding stage, the system automatically selects right components for the medicine mixture according to the ‘least waste' policy. The solution also supports printing out of instructions on required components and mixing techniques. Then a dispensing isolator technician uses this instruction for medicine preparation. The post-compounding stage includes another validity check to ensure a high quality of a freshly created drug.

During the labeling, release and delivery stage, the medicine gets a sticker with the patient’s name, his or her location, shelf-life date and storage requirements. Then this drug is handed to a courier and delivered to a patient. Stock control

With this module, the Customer’s specialists can oversee the flow of products, monitor the inventory of components and timely restock them. It allows the Customer to support uninterrupted production of new medicines and deliver them to patients timely.