EU group names providers of pharma verification repository

The EMVO has nominated three firms to provide the data hubs underpinning its proposed EU medicines-tracking scheme.

EMVO (the European Medicines Verification Organisation) says that after months of negotiations Aegate, Arvato and Solidsoft Reply are its preferred providers for the repositories that will be needed to handle the transactional data generated by the medicines verification requirements of the Falsified Medicines Directive.

The non-profit EMVO was set up earlier this year by five partner organisations representing the pharmaceutical industry, wholesale distributors, pharmacies, the generic medicines sector and parallel traders in order to oversee the implementation of these repositories.

It is a key component of the European Stakeholder Model (ESM) for medicines verification which has been proposed as a way to meet the safety feature requirements of the FMD.

The ESM involves placing a unique, serialised code onto each pack of medicine distributed in the EU at the point of manufacture and verifying it in pharmacies at the point at which the pack is dispensed to the patient.

The ESM relies on a series of repositories, which have to be able to interface properly with IT systems operated by manufacturers, parallel distributors, wholesalers and pharmacies as well as national database systems if it is to be suitable for pan-European application.



"The EMVO has designed a model that ensures a practical and cost-effective implementation of these repositories to minimise the burden of national stakeholder organisation - or NMVOs - which eventually will be responsible for the establishment and management of the systems," said the consortium in a statement.

"This blueprint model includes a support plan or implementation package and a short list of preferred service providers."

EMVO director general ad-interim Andreas Walter said: "The agreement with our new partners brings us a step forward in the fight against falsified medicines."

"We would like to encourage national stakeholders to take the example of EMVO, establish NMVOs, and sign up with one of our selected service providers."

The EMVO is a consortium between the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Association (EFPIA), the European Generic and Biosimilar medicines Association (EGA), the European Association of Euro-Pharmaceutical Companies (EAEPC), European Association of Pharmaceutical Full-line Wholesalers (GIRP) and Pharmaceutical Group of the European Union (PGEU).