GTIN
Colloquially, many know GTIN as a barcode, but technically, GTIN is the number found beneath the barcode symbol itself, and can therefore also be used for other technologies such as 2D barcodes and RFID tags.
Colloquially, many know GTIN as a barcode, but technically, GTIN is the number found beneath the barcode symbol itself, and can therefore also be used for other technologies such as 2D barcodes and RFID tags.
Nothing less, according to Adam Hartmann, CEO of the Danish company Eupry, which is finding success with its service: making it easy to monitor the temperature of sensitive products. Primarily pharmaceuticals, and secondarily food.
Eupry’s customers include pharmacies, hospitals, and laboratories. They all need constant monitoring to ensure that refrigerator temperatures stay within the correct range. Temperatures that are too high or too low can cause medication to lose its intended effect. This leads to waste and, in the worst case, poor treatment.
"Today, the practice in many places is to put a thermometer in the fridge, and then someone remembers to check if the temperature is right every once in a while. It might be correct at the moment the employee looks at the thermometer – but what about an hour ago? Or last week? The fact is that there is a widespread lack of temperature data collection and the ability to detect unintended temperature fluctuations," says Adam.
Manual processes and potential oversights can be a major challenge in complying with the EU's "Good Distribution Practice" (GDP) standards.
There is a lot to be gained, both for patient safety and in terms of costs from waste, when you have continuous monitoring. And this is the vision Eupry has set out to fulfill:
"We provide a service where, for example, a pharmacy receives a WiFi thermometer. You just place it in your fridge and click a button – then the WiFi thermometer is connected and sending 'live' data, and the pharmacist can start viewing the temperature curve for the fridge in a browser or an app. You decide for yourself how you want to be alerted if the temperature goes outside the agreed range, for example via SMS," explains Adam.
Adam, who is a co-founder of Eupry, came up with the idea during his studies when he experienced firsthand UNICEF's challenges with temperature control during both transport and storage in Africa:
"It was so glaringly obvious that there is a need to be able to both monitor and document that temperatures are maintained. This benefits the stakeholders in the supply chain who, together, must ensure that patients ultimately receive quality products."
"Firstly, it’s great that GS1 is an NGO with no conflicts of interest in the supply chain. Secondly, the standards make it possible for us to create interfaces with other systems quite easily when they are also based on standards – it provides great flexibility," explains Adam.
Each WiFi thermometer is labeled with a unique GRAI number from GS1, and when it is sent to a given pharmacy, it is paired in Eupry's system with the pharmacy's unique GLN. This allows Eupry to manage agreements with its customers and easily keep track of when thermometers need to be recalled for annual inspection from which customers. Furthermore, information about how a given customer wants their thermometers calibrated is linked to the customer's GLN in the system, ensuring that it is returned to the customer with the requested specifications.
"But all of this is really just the foundation for achieving the ultimate vision," Adam explains. "In today's supply chain for temperature-sensitive medicine, every single link – such as the manufacturer, the carrier, and the pharmacy – is responsible for monitoring and documenting that the product has been stored correctly while in their custody. However, this data is not passed on from link to link. Consequently, there is no transparency, which can create doubt as to whether temperature requirements have been met."
"The GS1 EPCIS standard makes it possible to share data about events in the supply chain – for example, temperatures at various points. Based on this standard, we want to make it possible to see the full temperature curve for a product, right from the pharmaceutical manufacturer to the patient. We can, so to speak, link the information from every stakeholder together."
"For example, pharmaceutical manufacturers have an interest in knowing what happens to their products," says Adam. "For the health authorities, this is valuable knowledge, both in terms of patient safety and because a lot of money is spent on medicine. It is in everyone's interest that we avoid having to throw products away because they were stored incorrectly. Some Danes receive medicine worth 100,000 DKK per month, so it is worth improving in this area."
But what about data security?
Adam: "The clever thing about EPCIS is that you can precisely control which stakeholders have access to which data. This ensures, for example, that competitors cannot access each other's data."
When using standards, a solution from one industry can more easily be transferred to another. This is something Eupry has experienced.
One of Eupry's customers in the food industry is Fødevarebanken (The Food Bank), which collects and redistributes food at its warehouses across Denmark to recipients such as shelters. These are goods that are close to their expiration date, which highlights the importance of having complete control over storage temperatures so that Fødevarebanken can confidently vouch for the quality of the goods.
"We are in dialogue with several retailers about the possibilities our service provides for temperature monitoring of, for example, supermarket refrigerated displays. It is fundamentally the same challenge as in a laboratory – and there is great interest in solutions that provide greater transparency in the supply chain," Adam notes.
As technology becomes more accessible, temperature monitoring should be a focus in more areas:
"It is not only in laboratories and at GPs' offices that temperature measurements can strengthen patient safety. Many medicines with specific storage requirements are found in people's homes, and here, too, the medicine must be stored at the right temperature. A next step should therefore be to strengthen patient safety through documented, correct storage in private homes. Let us use the technological possibilities where they can help patients," urges Jesper Kervin Franke, Healthcare Manager at GS1 Denmark.
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GTIN (also known as EAN) stands for “Global Trade Item Number” and is the number sequence shown beneath a barcode symbol.
GTIN (EAN) is a global standard used to uniquely identify digital and physical products, allowing the barcode to be scanned anywhere in the world throughout the supply chain.
A GLN (also known as EAN) allows you to uniquely identify physical, functional, legal, or digital entities. This can include the sender, receiver, buyer, seller, supplier, manufacturer, delivery location, billing location, store, or internal departments.
