Single Point of Truth (SPoT)

About the Single Point of Truth (SPoT)

Accurate pharmaceutical product information is a vital element of modern healthcare. Whether you are a manufacturer, a regulator, a patient, or a doctor: reliable information about your medication is key. In Europe, the Summary of Product Characteristics (SPC) is the vehicle to provide this information. Currently, the process of creating or updating an SPC and the related patient information leaflet can be labor-intensive and inefficient.

The blue sky to solve this problem would be that all data on product information - as approved by for example EMA or FDA - is centrally accessible and maintained as structured data. Therefore, BrightPharma, in collaboration with the Dutch Medicines Evaluation Board and additional pharma stakeholders, introduces the SPoT.

The SPoT is a structured, classified information model and associated data scheme, such that every data element is stored exactly once and is considered trustful by all stakeholders. This means that a lot less time on checking, updating, and reviewing is required, as information is submitted first.

To obtain the SPoT, standardization of data, processes, and rules about medicines is necessary, underpinned by a semantic framework identifying the meaning of all this pharmaceutical knowledge. Many mandated fields of medicinal product information are already standardized based on global standards like ICD10, ATC codes, MedDRAcodes, SNOMED, and so on.

Brightpharma has the track record and the vision to introduce the SPoT. BrightPharma provides a proven classification & ontology methodology and supporting tools, based on more than 30 years of experience in regulatory environments, pharmaceutical pathways, and implementing innovative concepts for capturing and disseminating knowledge.

BrightPharma has already presented to the Dutch Medicines Board (MEB/CBG) and some pharmaceutical companies promising prototypes covering several SPCs, which can be upscaled to the full range of SPCs.

A SPoT has advantages for all stakeholders, for example:

Manufacturers: all teams working on SPC info submit structured product information directly into an SPoT via authorized access levels.

Regulatory bodies: use the same SPoT and let algorithms run required assessments on changes. Releasing automatically generated SPCs and/or patient leaflets will be much easier and faster and require only a final human check.

PCPs: use the same SPoT as uniform, and up-to-date data store for - artificial intelligent - digital patient services. By assuring interoperability, direct SPC connectivity with Electronic Health Records can be achieved. Thus, patient leaflet updates may be connected to a patient’s record, allowing for precision checks of individual relevancy of for instance medication information updates.

Key facts in 2018:
• EMA 1302 drugs registered.
• # SPCs can go above 20.000 per EU country, patient leaflets not included.
• SPC updates take about 660 regulatory authority employees per year in region Europe.
• > 500 company regulatory affairs representatives in region Europe spend about 40% of their time on SPC updates.
• It takes approximately 1 year before new information reaches the customer (end-to-end process: update/review/approval à artwork implementation à stock First Expired First Out to patient).

Contact info: info@brightpharma.nl

Source PNA Group - Author: Frank Harmsen

License: Creative Commons License

Category: EA