The Center for Healthcare Supply Chain Research (formerly the HDMA Research & Education Foundation) recently published an important study concerning data management and data sharing in the healthcare supply chain. The key conclusions of the study are paraphrased below:

• The primary goals of the healthcare industry are to ensure patient safety and to deploy processes and systems that are compliant with the various state and federal requirements.
• Industry recognizes the enormous potential business value of leveraging shared data to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of supply chain processes through enhanced visibility.
• The recommended Blueprint for industry to achieve these goals is to develop a phased approach and architecture that leverages an important new EPCglobal standard for data exchange called electronic product code information services (EPCIS).

EPCIS is a standard mechanism for inter-company collaboration and data sharing, which can enable healthcare trading partners to deploy solutions that not only meet the short-term mandates driven by patient safety, but also to lay the foundation for long-term business value. Furthermore, the same infrastructure that is recommended in the Blueprint for data sharing and external collaborative business processes also is applicable to many internal processes, so that companies can begin capturing value from these investments now.