Veratrak Attends Pharma and Device Packaging and Labelling Europe 2019

Veratrak kicked off the conference season by attending the Pharma and Device Packaging conference in Munich. Overall, we had engaging conversations at our booth with delegates from over 60 companies from the life science industry. 

The issues with current document collaboration processes with partners, and the complexities of using email communication for document sharing resonated with all those we spoke with.

Takeaways from the conference:

Some of the key takeaways were on the industry challenges around the artwork collaboration processes and its complexities, further reinforcing the need for a platform like ours.

Artwork Process:

The artwork process across large and small pharmaceutical companies, especially when outsourcing to the third party suppliers is complex and highly fragmented. Lengthy email threads, version control, no single dashboard for CMO/CPO partners, and non-uniform processes were a few of the reasons sighted.

At Veratrak, we are tackling these same issues for our customers and partners and offer a better solution for collaboration on critical quality business processes.

Impact of the FMD:

One of the most prominent themes for discussions was the recent serialization changes in the European pharmaceutical industry. Over the course of 2 days, various companies came forward to discuss the impact of the FMD on their processes.

The FMD is probably the single biggest regulatory change in the last few decades. The introduction of the FMD has enabled companies to think more digitally, focus on collaboration, and areas of improvement in the future, specifically with regards to secure transfer of documentation and data.

One of our key takeaways was that current regulatory oversight does not go far enough. We are still sharing sensitive quality documentation such as packaging artwork using non GxP validated tools like Microsoft Excel and e-mail. Should this be the next focus area for regulators with serialisation now over the line?