Pharmaceutical services company opens door to open source

Just found out that EXP Pharmaceutical Services Corp. Looks as if we are really beginning to see an evolving trend in which more and more companies in the medical field are moving away from the closed source world.

EXP Pharmaceutical Services Corp. of Fremont, Calif., is finding freedom from huge licensing fees and increasing its ROI thanks to a recent migration from Windows and a proprietary software infrastructure to Linux and open source solutions.

EXP specializes in the reverse distribution of expired prescription and over-the-counter drugs. Medicines usually ship from a pharmaceutical company warehouse with an expiration date and a warranty of some kind, so that when the products remain unsold past the expiration date, the retailer can recoup some of its losses or have the product replaced with “fresh” medicine. EXP works on behalf of retail pharmacies and drugstores to facilitate the return process.

When Brent Siler joined EXP in June 2003 as its director of information technology, he immediately launched an evaluation of the company’s systems, especially those that directly interfaced with EXP’s customers. “Anytime you come into a new organization, you have to look at the assets,” Siler says, “and you have to understand the pain points the company is having.”

For EXP, the goal was to have better interaction with its customers. When Siler came on board, the company operated in what he calls a “closed environment,” meaning that all the information and reports that customers needed on a day-to-day basis, such as inventory forms and reimbursement reports, were generated internally and on paper. The reports had to be produced, photocopied, and mailed to the proper recipients — labor-intensive tasks that were costly in terms of staff time. [Read the rest]