Patent Application
20110225100
This invention relates to systems and methods for managing medicines and other medical drugs provided by a pharmaceutical company. More particularly, it relates to monitoring and managing the distribution and sales of the medicines.
There is a major problem related to the distribution, sales and use of counterfeit drugs and other pharmaceutical products. In many countries around the world, medicines that are distributed and sold are fake, i.e. counterfeit. These medicines are deliberately and fraudulently mislabeled with respect to identity and/or source. They can range from unknown random combinations of toxic substances to ineffective, inactive preparations, such as lacking an active ingredient. The results of counterfeit drugs are that either there is an ineffective treatment, a harmful outcome, or even worse, death, for a patient or end user of the medicine.
In January 2010, the World Health Organization published an article on counterfeit drugs, describing the major health concern related with these illegal medicines. One counterfeit medicine for lowering blood sugar levels resulted in two deaths and nine hospitalizations in 2009 alone. In the United Republic of Tanzania in 2009, an antimalarial drug (Metakelfin), however lacking sufficient level of the active ingredient, was discovered in 40 pharmacies. This is particularly a problem in countries having weaknesses in their regulatory and enforcement systems. An estimated 1 in 4 packets of medicine sold in the street markets in developing countries is believed to be counterfeit. Over 50% of the medicines purchased over the Internet are from illegal sites that conceal their physical address, have been found to be counterfeit.
More generally, in this environment (and even that of more-developed countries), a pharmaceutical manufacturer typically has little to no interaction or review of the sales of their medicines. After distributing their products to representatives or directly to end users, the pharmaceutical company does not communicate with the user thereafter. Likewise, the medical distributor simply sells products, with no feedback from users or sales information pertaining to the users. There is no interaction between the users of the medicines and the providers (manufacturers or distributors) or the products. There is not an effective way of eliminating these counterfeit medicines, accordingly there is a need for a system that verifies the validity of medicines, for the sake of all parties involved, particularly the end user of the medicine.
Accordingly, there is a need for a system and method for accurately verifying the validity of medicines to ensure they are not counterfeit. The system and method should allow pharmaceutical companies and providers to observe when and where their products are selling. A desirable system would help reduce the availability of counterfeit medicines. There is a need for a system that obtains information pertaining to the users of the products to further analyze sales and distribution based on that information. It is desirable for such a system to perform comparative analysis of distribution and sales of their products. Further, communication between the pharmaceutical company and users is desirable to provide feedback and important messages from the company to users in addition to the user information to the companies. In such a system, the communication can be performed, for example, through cell phones, or other available portable or stationary electronic communication devices.
There is provided a system and method for verifying the validity of medicines, as well as the tracking, monitoring, and otherwise managing medicines. The system and method performs related analysis of the data of product sales and distribution data. The system allows pharmaceutical companies to manage the sales and distribution of products based on a code associated with a particular batch of the medicine or the product itself. Each medicine includes an identifying product code used in managing the distribution and sales of the products, thereby identifying a particular product of a batch of products. These codes can be uploaded by users and pharmaceutical company representatives through any number of communication devices, including via a text message, a smartphone application, the Internet in general, or any other appropriate network. The code can be provided directly on an exterior surface of a bottle or other container for the medicine so it is readily available to a user.
The system includes a verification server that manages and controls the code data and information regarding sales of medicines. The verification server further analyzes the sales of medicines, verifying the validity of the medicines. The system further includes a management server that includes a plurality of applications running thereon for further managing the sales of medicines and related statistical data. The system allows pharmaceutical companies to send response and verification messages to users and representatives of the products. This improves feedback to users and pharmaceutical communication overall. The verification messages can be the same form as the codes that are uploaded by the users, or can be in a different form. For example, the verification messages can be in the form of text messages, electronic mail communications, voice mail messages, messages/interaction with a smartphone application, the Internet in general, or any other appropriate message provided through a network.
The system includes a verification database in which the codes that identify the medicines, and sales thereof, are stored. This database copies itself at set intervals on the verifications data only (without the codes) as a dashboard database, and the dashboard database is transmitted through the system network to a dashboard interface such that the updated statistics are available on the interface. The verification database is included within the verification system and the verification server communicates with the verification database to obtain any desired information. This decoupling between the codes and the verification data secures the system by transferring only verification data, and not codes, to the dashboard interface.
The dashboard interface is available on a display for managing the sales of medicines. The dashboard interface includes a plurality of application-specific buttons for viewing a specified analysis of the statistical sales data. The user can perform and review verifications of sales and comparisons of sales, or review response messages to be transmitted to users. The dashboard interface further provides graphical representations of the product sales, based on statistical data.
The method of the illustrative sales management system stores a code and associated data for medicines, to be used in managing the sales of the products. The method then tracks the sales of the products and initiates one of a plurality of applications to perform verifications, comparisons or review of responses generated to users.
The method can further perform statistical analysis on the sales of the medicines to report and display graphical representations, for example on the dashboard interface. The method also reports the sales of medicines to pharmaceutical companies, so that they can appropriately manage this information and report back to users via response messages.
The invention description below refers to the accompanying drawings, of which:
There is provided a system and method for verifying the validity of medicines, as well as tracking, monitoring, and otherwise managing medicines, and related analysis of the sales and distribution data. As shown in
As shown in
A user 120 of the system 100 transmits code data about the medicine, as well as user information, containing particular information about the user via datastream 121. The user can be an end user or consumer, seeking to verify the validity and safety of their medications. A user transmits the code data to verify the authenticity of the medicines, based upon feedback from the various components of the system 100.
According to the system 100, the user submits a query via datastream 121 to the network 115 to perform a call in function to verify the validity, or one of a plurality of other applications pertaining to the system. The code data and user query are transmitted via datastream 145 to a verification system 150. The verification system includes a verification server 151 that has a verification application 152 and response controller 153 running thereon. The verification server 151 receives the query responses and codes to perform appropriate control and verification of data to verify the validity of the medicines. The verification server 151 also stores the codes 154 into the secure verification database 155, within the verification system 150. The statistics and reports on sales and distribution of the medicines generated by the verification system are transmitted back to the network 115 via datastream 156. These are then transmitted back to a user 120 via datstream 125 and a pharmaceutical company 110 via datastream 112. While the various servers and/or applications are depicted at specific locations and perform specific tasks, the relative positions and division of tasks between the various entities is highly variable.
User queries and statistics are transmitted via datastream 157 to a management server 160. The management server 160 includes a plurality of applications that perform a multitude of functions, described in greater detail with reference to
On a periodic basis, the secure verification database 155 selectively copies itself (no codes are transferred, only the verification data) to provide a copy to the users, for example, as a dashboard database at a dashboard interface. The decoupling between codes and verification data secures the system by transferring only verification data, and not codes, to the dashboard interface. A dashboard database (the copy of the database without codes) is transmitted to the dashboard user at a dashboard interface 170 via datastream 172. These updated statistics therefore reside on the management server 160 through the dashboard user interface (see
The verification server and the management server can comprise any appropriate server or computing architecture, including a computer program running as an application or other service, a physical computer dedicated to running applications, and/or a software/hardware system of components, as described herein and otherwise readily apparent to those of ordinary skill.
Reference is now made to
The dashboard 261 is an analytics tool used to provide the total verifications, daily verifications, regional verifications, product verifications and cross-sell verifications, among others, for the system for verifying medicines. The SVN application 262 is a version-control system that is used to maintain current and historical versions of files. Can be used for quality assurance and other production environments. The quality assurance application 263 analyzes data to ensure quality assurance of the overall system. The response control manager 264 coordinates with the verification server 150 to manage responses based on products and/or batches of products. The printer integrator 265 can be a server or application that connects with the pharmaceutical company to transfer codes online. The printer integrator 265 also coordinates with the verification system 150 to verify the codes.
The statistics and reports on the sales and distribution of the medicines are generated by the verification system according to the procedures and methods disclosed herein and discussed in greater detail with reference to the flow charts of
Referring now to
Based upon the query response, the verification server prepares a message for the user and the response controller application (running on verification server) adds an appropriate response to the message at step 318. The verification and response are then sent to the user via the network at step 320. These are used to communication a verification (or lack thereof) to a user. The verification messages can be presented to the user through any appropriate system described herein, including text messages through a cellular telephone network, smartphone application messages, and internet-based messages, among others.
There can be three types of responses generated for a user. The first is a valid response for up to “n” notifications, where “n” is any number of medicines. An example of this first response is: “MCN labs authenticates genuine product of [Product Name], batch [Batch Number]. Thank you for your patronage. Service provided by PharmaSecure.” The second is an “invalid” response, which is returned if the customer enters an invalid code. An example of this second response is: “The code typed ‘---’ is incorrect. Please retype the code or contact chemist for further assistance. Service provided by PharmaSecure.” The third is an “oververified” code, in which the number of verifications is excessive for that particular code, thereby indicating it is not a valid medicine. An example of this third response: “Warning! Expired code! Please contact the chemist for further assistance. Service provided by Pharmasecure.”
Then at procedure step 530 the response controller of the management server modifies an appropriate message for the dashboard user to include subsequent code verifications. The management server includes applications for performing various statistical analysis and review of the sales of the medicines. These are included in the response to the user to provide a message with details on the particular statistical data of the sales of the medicines. The user then receives the validation response and appropriate message at step 540, thereby validating (or finding a lack of validation) for the medicine.
Reference is now made to
A user selecting the dashboard link 610 is directed to a page for determining the settings of the dashboard interface system. The verifications option 612 allows a user to view the total verifications (720 of
As shown in
Selecting the regions tab 710 causes a drop down screen 800 to be displayed, as shown in
As shown in
By selecting the batches tab 714, a drop down screen 1000 is displayed. This provides a list of check boxes 1010 to select the various batches of medicines to be analyzed. A user can select the apply button 1020 to apply the particular medicine batches of interest to the graphical representation 750. A user can also select a check all link 1022 to select all of the batches for analysis, or select a clear all link 1024 to deselect particular batches for the medicines.
A user selecting the dates button 716 causes a drop down screen 1100 to be displayed, as shown in
A dashboard user can also perform comparisons by selecting the link 620 of
Users can also set the responses that will be transmitted from the pharmaceutical company, either by region or by product. Selecting responses by region directs a user to the screen display 1300 that provides messages for a particular company. As shown. A user can add further exceptions to the messages by selecting the add exception box 1305. A user can select a particular region exception by selecting the name, for example for all India link 1312. This presents a user with the screen box 1310 in which a plurality of product exceptions 1315 are listed as exceptions to the response messages.
The responses can also be reviewed by product, for example as shown in
These and other applications and advantages should be clear to an ordinarily skilled person. The systems and methods herein improve review of sales and medicines and the communication between a pharmaceutical company and users of the medicines.
The foregoing has been a detailed description of illustrative embodiments of the invention. Various modifications and additions can be made without departing from the spirit and scope of this invention. Each of the various embodiments described above may be combined with other described embodiments in order to provide multiple features. Furthermore, while the foregoing describes a number of separate embodiments of the apparatus and method of the present invention, what has been described herein is merely illustrative of the application of the principles of the present invention. For example, the procedures have been described with reference to managing medicines, particular drugs provided by a pharmaceutical company. However, the teachings herein are readily applicable to any medicine that is sold or distributed, for which data is available. Accordingly, this description is meant to be taken only by way of example, and not to otherwise limit the scope of this invention.
This application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Patent Application Ser. No. 61/313,265, filed Mar. 12, 2010, entitled SYSTEM, METHOD AND INTERFACE DISPLAY FOR VERIFYING AND MANAGING DISTRIBUTION AND SALES OF MEDICINE, the entire disclosure of which is herein incorporated by reference.
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 61313265 | Mar 2010 | US |
