So, what is going on in United States is there's a wall called drug supply security act. It is one of the only serialization acts in the world that requires change of ownership. It's not a dispense model like in the EU where you, you scan it at the pharmacy and verify the serial number in the us. You have to exchange data between your supply chain partners and also they could make requests asking for the validity of the serial number and G 10 S or batch number or expiration date. So what we're looking at here is we need some kind of electronic or digital system to verify the players in the DSCSA systems to just are who they say they are. They're authorized trading partner. And in the us an authorized trading partner, somebody with a valid state license or FEI, that's a FDA facility, establishment ID, and that's mainly for manufacturers.
So what Novartis is doing to meet in secure supply chain and comply with DS E SSA, there's several attributes. We are putting zero numbers on cases and sellable units and aggregating. We are implementing a VRS system through SAP, which is a wholesale sellable returns where the wholesaler can request it, the serial number, the expiration date, the batch number G 10 are authentic. That is going to be expanded to other entities in the supply chain towards 2023. And especially to partners that are indirect. And what we need here is to do this is credentialing digital ID because what's happening here is I'm, I'm I'm request getting a request from somebody for a verification or I'm sending product out and it's called cash to order. And I have to verify that who I'm sending that product out to has a valid state license. So what we're doing to use this digital ID is we're putting it, embedding it in our systems with the cooperation of SAP and other supply chain partners. So we can secure the network because it's a distributed network. It's not a centralized database, it's a distributed network. So we need to know, as we communicate with 70,000 supply chain partners who you are, or you say who you are and are you an authorized trading partner. So that's how we're building out to secure the supply chain, not just to meet the DS CSA requirement, but also to assure that Novartis is, is sending product to, to the correct individuals and that they're not bad actors.
Yeah. So what we will do is we will discuss how we built out digital ID for VRS and with SAP and other supply chain partners with other service providers in the network in the United States, we will talk about what we currently are doing in piloting and that we are now going to our production model. And also we have four service providers who have cooperated through O OCI to build a inoperable credentially digital ID system and where it also can be expanded in the future, like order to cash and maybe other opportunities for 2023 and at what the importance of this is. And also why we did it we'll find out is that we were using gons and other methods to identify partners. And that was not sufficient. We were finding that there was no registrations that people who were using them were the, not the people who said they were using them. So we will go through all that in this panel and show the importance of digital ID.
