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PRISYM LS HomeLabeling Seminar Q&A Session
The following post is a transcript of the Q&A session held recently at the labeling seminar we hosted in Philidelphia on 20th February 2009. It’s a frank discussion between representatives from leading pharmaceutical companies and myself, Product Manager for PRISYM ID.
The topics covered include the following and focus around our web-based labeling product Prisym MedicaWeb:
- Thick and thin clients for labeling solutions
- How a web-based solution can augment an existing package
- Client and server based printing
- Software version control
- Capturing customer label approvals through web-based software
What are the determining features of a thick and thin client solution for labeling?
The tasks and the nature of their role – if you’ve got a user printing on a high-speed line, would you really want them using a web browser to do that?
Might it be easier to have some kind of front end or thick client which caches information from the ERP systems – if speed becomes an issue on the lines, then it may still be appropriate for a thick client or front end to be the type of solution utilised.
Similarly if you have a very small office and it’s in an area where network connectivity is weak – it may actually be easier to deploy a thick client solution there and have local audit servers just to be able to provide a ‘what happens if the network goes down’ rather than being completely reliant on having to connect out to a web server somewhere outside.
Equally in that scenario you could deploy a local web server and local data source there – but again it’s a question of, what is appropriate for a specific situation? A scenario such as high volumes of printing, where an organisation has everyone is in one site. That might be great to use the web technology internally as you’re not reliant on anything outside of your own network.
Equally though, if you’re a highly distributed company, if you’ve got all of your regulatory users in the east coast, technical users on the west coast, maybe designers in Europe then being able to collaborate like this using the web may well make sense for that organisation.
Is MedicaWeb an augmentation of Prisym Medica 5 rather than a replacement?
Prisym Medica 5 will continue to be developed as a front-line solution, a flag ship product from PRISYM ID. We fully expect people to still take full server-client solutions. The way we’ve designed MedicaWeb is to be an alternative way to get into the same logic, business rules, data and formats as you currently can in Prisym Medica 5.
Companies that have Prisym Medica 5 at the moment can deploy MedicaWeb and start the roll out process in a small way by deciding where this is appropriate for them. They’re not replacing their existing architecture – just a web server needing to be added to the network infrastructure and some additional licences ordered.
Some of our current global customers only want it as a web-based solution with no thick clients because they have an IT team based in the US and don’t want them flying all over the world to deal with IQs & PQs every time there’s an software update.
We’ve also got customers that just want thick clients. But for their suppliers and customers they want to extend the system out to them so they can use it. They are not able to install our software in their suppliers or customer sites but MedicaWeb gives them the ability to extend the approval process without requiring a software installation.
Realistically if you can get more people involved with the approval process, there’s less likelihood of errors getting through – improving patient safety.
Does MedicaWeb support both client and server based printing configurations?
The answer is we support both. It’s configured by server permissions as to whether a user can print to a local printer or whether the user can only print to a server printer.
From the server-side you have the ability to set up any number of printers the server can access, but if you’re a client in the UK and your server is based in the US it would make sense for you to print to a printer locally. That local printer doesn’t have to be directly connected to the local machine; it could be on the local network.
In terms of print speeds and quality – currently with Prisym Medica 5 all of the print jobs get sent from the server to the printer. Now what happens when your client and printer are both in the same location is that you can send the print job from the client to the printer – obviously improving print speed.
How are new software versions rolled out and how tightly are they controlled?
Whether it’s installing a new driver, new functionality, customization which is typically where we get involved in the most, you install it on the server and it can be immediately available to all users. It would make sense that there would Standard Operating Procedures in place to control this though.
We can configure different user domains so user security can be controlled. If you are in the UK you can login to see the UK experience; if you’re in the US you can login to a different domain and see the US experience.
You also then have your supplier domain and they login and see something different, perhaps even branded differently from your internal sites
So yes, it can be controlled tightly but the centralized nature of the system is its key strength.
How does MedicaWeb get customer approval on the system?
It’s one of those things we have fundamentally rethought with MedicaWeb. Saving a label as a new version and sending a picture to the customer to get their approval isn’t necessary any more. The customer can now be involved within the software so the customer can be part of the approval process, built in.
The customer can see the label proof you’ve designed in your software – the scenario is the same as if you’ve given your customer a copy of Prisym Medica 5 and they open up a label as you have designed it on your screen which they can then approve. They can be part of the approval process that says, yes I agree or no I don’t.
Can we integrate with Active Directory for single sign-on purposes?
Prisym Medica has a real time link to the Active Directory tree so when a new user is created within Active Directory, they’re automatically created within Prisym Medica. The credentials are synchronized and by default the new user is created with zero permission within the application – an administrator then needs to set the individual permissions of a user.
Each domain, be it internal users, suppliers or customers, has its own permissions and method for how it’s synchronized with Active Directory or otherwise.
