In a recent news release, the Healthcare Distribution Management Association (HDMA) and the Specialty & Biotech Distributors Association (SBDA) announced that their respective boards of directors approved a proposal to integrate associations and operations. In case you’re not familiar with these organizations, the news release says that the HDMA is a trade association representing America’s primary healthcare distributors that each business day ensure that more than nine million prescription medicines and healthcare products are safely delivered to more than 165,000 pharmacies, hospitals, nursing homes, physician offices, clinics and others nationwide. As for the SBDA, its six member companies—AmerisourceBergen Specialty Group, Cardinal Health, CuraScript Specialty Distribution, Health Coalition Inc., McKesson Specialty Care Solutions, and US Oncology—represent over ninety percent of the volume of drugs delivered to physician offices in the United States.

There’s no specific mention in the news release about GS1. But if you take a minute to look at the HDMA website, it doesn’t take very long to see strong connections to the evolving global product data standard. Just do a search on GS1 from the HDMA site. I did, and found Ron Bone. He is the Senior Vice President for Distribution Support at McKesson Corporation; a member of the Business Steering Committee of EPCglobal as well as a member of the GS1 Healthcare leadership team; and… wait for it… he is a member of the Industry Relations Committee for the Healthcare Distribution Management Association (HDMA).

I think the connection is pretty clear and the implications to GS1 adoption quite obvious and quite positive, don’t you?

You can see the HDMA/SBDA news release here. The HDMA website homepage is here. And, here is Mr. Bone’s bio, from a search of the HDMA website .