The impact of a shared pharmaceutical supply chain model on counterfeit drugs, diverted drugs, and drug shortages

The pharmaceutical supply chain in the United States of America (USA) is getting complicated and is often not controllable due to a globally open market, increasing online market, and many illegal activities. Some consumers who cannot afford to buy high priced genuine products are tempted by easily accessible counterfeit drugs on illegal web site pharmacies in or out of the USA. Corrupt participants including wholesalers or pharmacies in the supply chain take advantage of weak enforcement and a flawed drug supply chain for financial gain. The public health system and numerous patients are in, or could be in, painful situations caused from pharmaceutical supply chain problems including counterfeit drugs, diverted drugs, and drug shortage. In order to secure the drug supply chain, several solutions have been discussed, including a unit level serialized trace and tracking system, ePedigiree, and more. In this research, current problems and their causes will be discussed, and current solutions with their limitations will be presented. The proposed model, third party centralized integrated system (TPCIS) is presented, which overcomes some of barriers of existing solutions and several simulation models including ePedgiree, drug shortage, and recall models which have been developed for comparison. The simulation models show how the proposed model may help improve the current problems with public health systems.