Saturday Feb. 19, 2022 was a big day for Cardinal Health. Manager of Pharmaceutical Information Technology Jeff Falardeau announced it as the day Cardinal Health’s Investigator went live into production, during Wednesday’s LSPediA Investigator Virtual Workshop.
As it stood, Cardinal Health’s IT team had been using Investigator in the test environment and understanding how it would work with the suppliers. Without Investigator, EPCIS errors are uncovered and communicated manually with suppliers, which is an arduous and time-consuming task.
“It’s not pragmatic at all for a human to eyeball a EPCIS data file,” said Falardeau. “With Investigator you get a comprehensive list of all the errors. Investigator for EPCIS is definitely going to play a role in time reduction to mitigate risks.”
Of Cardinal Health’s 400 trading partners, roughly 10 percent are currently onboarded and have been correcting EPCIS errors that Cardinal Health’s IT team uncovers. As of Saturday, when Cardinal Health went into production, the onboarded suppliers will start receiving emails from Investigator. Saturday was significant because it will free up valuable time for Falardeau and team as well as making it easier for suppliers to correct any errors Investigator finds.
Falardeau covered what onboarded suppliers can expect after Saturday’s production date.
“If there is an error in (data) transmission, the EPCIS file will not process. If there is a warning, the file will process but you’ll still get an alert. In any case, you should follow the link in your email (from Investigator). Errors should be addressed ASAP. Warnings should also be addressed as they may become issues long term,” said Falardeau.
Falardeau said that the most common warning encountered was a missing transaction statement as well as incorrect NDC tags. Those will remain as warnings until the Nov. 27, 2023 deadline. They will then be regarded as errors.
Cardinal Health encourages supplier trading partners to remain vigilant in onboarding with a sense of urgency. This is because wholesale distributors need additional time to get on the same page with their dispensers. This is why Cardinal Health has a Nov. 27, 2022 deadline for its suppliers to be onboarded.
“In terms of expectations for serialized aggregated data, we hope suppliers will share a sense of urgency,” said Falardeau. “We have to get the data and stabilize our systems. It is essential to get a head start with dispensers. I also hope our suppliers will continue to focus on root cause, which is error remediation.”
Falardeau noted that Cardinal Health’s onboarding guide has been updated to include additional information on Investigator for EPCIS. To learn more about LSPediA’s Investigator, click here.
The Cardinal Health Investigator Workshop is held every month on the third Wednesday of the month at 3pm. Each workshop requires separate registration. Click here to register for the March 16 workshop.
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