Gary Lerner, Founder and President of Gateway Checker, was recently a guest on the Next Level Supply Chain Podcast by GS1 US. Speaking with VP of Innovation and Partnerships at GS1 US, Reid Jackson, their discussion highlighted the importance of a secure supply chain in keeping healthcare patients safe.
Their conversation covers the Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA), the importance of serialization in improving accuracy and maintaining supply chain integrity, as well as best practices for adapting to regulatory changes while improving efficiency.
Furthermore, Gary had the opportunity to share the early beginnings of Gateway Checker, as well as predictions for the future role of technology and artificial intelligence in enhancing supply chain integrity.
Click here to watch the episode or read the full episode transcript below!
Breaking Barriers: How DSCSA Transforms Healthcare Supply Chains – GS1 US
Full Transcript:
Introduction
You really need to understand that evolving from lot level to item level traceability, it’s disruptive. So you have to embrace the fact that it is disruptive, but it does provide benefits. That single scan of that license plate gives you four pieces of information. And if you’re required to track lot, it’s human readable.
You know, in the lot level days, it was never machine readable. The only thing machine readable on the pharmaceutical is the linear code. And that basically just tells you what the drug is. So you don’t get the lot code, you don’t get the expiration, but you do get it through a single scan. So it’s definitely, if you embrace that and integrate the reading of that into your environment, that really helps.
Hello and welcome to the Next Level Supply Chain with GS1 US, a podcast in which we explore the mind-bending world of global supply chains, covering topics such as automation, innovation, unique identity, and more, I’m your co-host Reid and I’m Liz, and welcome to the show.
Hello everyone, I hope that you’re having a great day and welcome to the show. Our guest today is Gary Lerner. He’s the founder and president of Gateway Checker Corporation, and Gary’s been involved with supply chains and serialization for a very long time. He’s an accomplished architect of supply integrity solutions to protect global brands from counterfeiting, diversion, and intellectual property theft.
And we peel back the onion here today on a lot of those topics. We talk a little bit about DSCSA (the Drug Supply Chain Security Act) and some of the challenges there. We get into the physical and digital aspects of supply chain, cover some best practices, and really just talk about how to follow your workflow and identify gaps and make improvements because it’s a constant journey.
From Brand Protection to Healthcare Supply Chains
So without any further ado, let’s jump into the conversation. Hey, Gary, welcome to the show. Thank you, Reid. It’s a pleasure to be here. Dan, we’re glad you can carve out some time for us today. So before we jump into the details of what we’re going to discuss today, can you just give our audience just a little bit of background on yourself and Gateway Checker?
So I’m the founder and CEO of Gateway Checker and Gateway receives, manages, and exchanges serialized shipment transaction records. That enables supply integrity of pharmaceutical. Personally, I was trained as a mechanical engineer and I spent many years applying computers and factory automation technologies to address business process challenges in the design and manufacturing industries, such as automotive and aerospace and electronics.
My journey that got me here was from a brand protection venture that I helped establish about 20 years ago. Well, we recognized early on that the Internet was going to facilitate counterfeiting, adulteration and channel diversion in kind of new and unforeseen ways. And that’s what really got me into the space, although that startup was focused on global brands, such as apparel, footwear, sporting goods, fashion and technologies, because they were the early targets of brand pirates and bad actors.
Innovating Item-Level Traceability in Goods
But what I learned there, I’ve carried forward. You know, we established solutions to authenticate, track, and monitor supply integrity of products in the physical world and digitally and on the internet. And our efforts really predated the commercialization of mass market availability of, you know, the automated data capture systems that GS1 has standardized, like the GS1 2D data matrix code.
So you’ve been in this, What I call, other people have called it, I reuse it, “phygital”, this physical and digital space for, for quite some time now then. I kind of, through my own estimation, probably believe I’ve been at it longer than most. It’s over 20 years, started in 2000 effectively. And in those days, we had to pioneer and invent a lot of these technologies, but we, as part of this startup, we put on a 2D code that was called a dot matrix at the time.
And we protected sporting goods well, before there was any thought of trying to protect pharmaceuticals or medical devices or things like that was a unique situation because the brand owner owned the entire supply chain. And, you know, could scan everything on its way out the door, but it was highly effective. We shut down more than 70 diverters, never lost a core challenge, and really rooted out a whole gray market diversion in the sporting goods industry.
The Importance of Supply Chain Integrity in Healthcare
Wow. So I’d like to shift us from your history to your current. Tell us a little bit more about the importance today with Supply chain integrity, specifically within the health care space. What role does it play in patient safety?
Yes, well. You know, you always have to go back to your roots just a little bit. One of the things I learned in that, those four or five years is that you should never underestimate the ability of thieves to innovate and, you know, they’re motivated like all of us. They’re business people. It’s hard to think of it that way, but they’re motivated by profit, high margins, security gaps, weak enforcement. The biggest part of their business model is not to get caught. And so the pharmaceutical pirates are highly motivated.
And as consumers, we rely on our senses to authenticate medications, all of us, or many of us — I shouldn’t generalize all of us—but many of us take prescription medications and before ingesting or injecting them into our bodies, you know, we rely on our senses, such as what do we see? What do we touch? What do we smell? But all of those things are woefully inadequate. From a supply integrity perspective, they can easily be duplicated. So counterfeiting and adulteration, they’re going to continue. But what has been put together in the healthcare industry is really, I think, remarkable from all my years of experience.
We’ve got a connected and interlocking system that the FDA, through its Drug Supply Chain Security Act, has established, and I believe it can adequately protect us. Thank you very much. We have some challenges. We need to utilize this license plate that we’ve now put on every individual pharmaceutical and we need to track it through the supply chain. But it exists at every item level, package, vial, or bottle.
Breaking Down the “License Plate” of “Pharmaceuticals
And so when you say license plate, what exactly are you referring to? Because I don’t want to make assumptions for our audience. Yes, I don’t know how good our camera systems are. I happen to have 1 right here. So this is a commercially available pharmaceutical and the license plate is this 2 D data matrix that contains these 4 pieces of information.
There’s the GTIN, the lot, the serial number, and the expiration date. And with a single scan, someone can acquire those 4 pieces of information. And in essence, I think this is sort of the secret sauce that enables everything throughout the supply chain, because being able to read that barcode basically puts it in the Internet of Things.
This item is unique. There’s no two anywhere in the world. There should be no two, we should say. But that’s one of the ways you would detect a duplicate, right? Because if you’re reading these all the time, it’s not possible for a duplicate to mutually coexist. In two different locations, roughly at the same time.
Yeah. It’s very interesting that you bring up that example and the data matrix that’s being used within healthcare. This is in, in essence, we also refer to them as 2D barcodes in the business as your post your UPC barcode, which is just a single-lines up and down. Still very robust, different needs for different reasons, but there’s more data that can be captured in that data matrix.
I like this because four years ago, I was at an AI conference in San Francisco, and I was sitting in the front row and I had to have a GS1 US shirt on. And the person got up to speak about computer vision. And I was thrilled and still am amazed and love computer vision. And we work with it and consume; but what was interesting is, the person’s like, “Hey, I’m sorry for the GS1 guy in the front row here, because, you know, computer vision is going to replace barcodes.” And I raised my hand and I said, “how do you determine batch and lot information?” And he’s like, “well, you’d have to have that printed on it.” So I responded, “like a barcode, to have more information within it?”
So, you know, a little bit of tongue and cheek here, but it’s amazing how some of the technologies, there’s no silver bullet as you know, there’s systems and systems and, and, and technologies laying in upon this, there’s something in the industry I’m hearing a lot of, and I’m hoping you can shed a little light on this.
Understanding DSCSA and its Impact on Patient Safety
And it’s another one of our alphabet soups here. It’s a DSCSA, the Drug Supply Chain Security. And, you know, for our listeners who might not know, can you provide some context into how this is impacting the healthcare industry? I think that it’s establishing a framework for supply integrity. It’s interesting because the law covers from manufacturer through trading partners, right up to the point of dispense.
So, it doesn’t necessarily impact an individual patient that they wouldn’t necessarily see. But where it would make the world better and provide greater trust and confidence in the particular drug that they may be taking is to know that at any point in the supply chain, that item has been tracked and could be traced back to who touched it, when they touched it, and how they touched it.
And so that. What I call the license plate a few minutes ago. That’s part of a layered and interlocking system. You know, as you said, Reid, there really isn’t a silver bullet, but there are layers to a good supply integrity solution and one of them is uniqueness; and with uniqueness, you can authenticate some, but there are other dimensions too.
And you need to be able to track where that item has been. And we have EPCIS file format that does that from trade partner to trade partner. And then we need enforcement and we need the ability for laws and regulators and whatnot to be able to provide control mechanisms to make sure that people are following the rules; to ensure that products are flowing through the supply chain, as they’re supposed to, without any bad actors.
And one of the things that DSCSA did, and again, it’s kind of out of the reach or vision of consumers, but they established a concept of authenticating the trade partner. Only licensed people are supposed to be handling our pharmaceuticals. It’s common sense, right? But the FDA didn’t have that authority before DSCSA started. So they couldn’t establish a national approach to licensing various trade partners. And as a result, in various states, there were trade partners that were not necessarily licensed or vetted and were actually bad actors.
So they were touching legitimate pharmaceuticals and doing things. There’s a great book about it, Dangerous Doses, which you may or may not have read. It highlights some real-world cases.
That’s very interesting because when I think of like drug tracking, you think of like, you know, opioids and, you know, overdosing and those types of things, and that’s why there’s security in place. You’re talking about counterfeit and like, you know, I’m trying to get insulin, but it’s not insulin, right? It could be as, you know, simple as anything, but it’s, it could be a placebo type of thing where, where people are just, you know, like you said, thieves or bad players are just trying to make money and trying to make a profit off of this. So this covers all of it.
How Bad Actors Exploit Supply Chain Gaps
Yes. I mean, Ozempic’s a good example, right? Something that’s highly in demand, everybody wants it, tries to get it from any corner, suddenly legitimate supply chain, you know, if you can’t get it at CVS, but you really want it, you know, now you’re going to the internet. And so most of us who have been doing this for a long time know that anybody can be anyone from anywhere on the Internet and be very convincing at that, right? Because again, all we have is our senses to rely on.
You mentioned before authenticity. And uniqueness allows for authenticity and that applies to anything and everything. We see it all the time. I mean, you know, certain brands have made public statements: “we don’t sell on this marketplace because we can’t send reliable information that you’re going to get this unique product because of the way that they run their marketplaces.” And we’re seeing marketplaces change that for. Everything from household goods to clothing and, you know, but this is, this is our health. As they say, without your health, you have nothing.
Counterfeit Prevention as Part of National Security
It’s also part of our national security. I don’t think we think about it that much, but I can tell you from my long tenure that, after I was working in the industry prior to 9 11 and after 9 11, the focus on supply chains really changed because people realized what was possible with terrorist attacks. And they suddenly realized that our food was at risk, right? Our medicines were at risk. And actually, just as a little bit of an aside, but maybe brings this concept of authentication, track and control.
I like to to talk about my experiences in the automotive industry, motor vehicle tracking, and you might say, what does that get to do with food and life sustaining things? But as it turns out in the United States, every act of terrorism has involved a motor vehicle. So suddenly the license plate on that motor vehicle is a really important deterrent.
I mean, it’s the reason we figured out who bombed the Oklahoma buildings, right? Was because Timothy McVeigh was driving without a legitimate license plate and he was Pulled over for that, which again, the laws allowed those kinds of things and that provided an interrogation and they held him in jail. It was 1 day from being released and someone realized there were some other clues that connected to him.
The reason the license plate is so secure, though, is not the plate itself. And I think this is the important point because to. Counterfeit a plate. Yes, it takes a 10 or 12-ton press, which none of us have in our basement. But I can tell you that bad actors can get that. And yes, it has a special 3M coating.
It’s highly reflective and whatnot, but it has a number and it’s got a unique set of numbers. And it’s the fact that if you put a bad plate on, you’d have to try to interlock it with all the other information about your vehicle, right? Because that plate is tied to the VIN of your vehicle, which, as we all know, it’s unique.
We also know the VIN is marked multiple places in the car, right? But that’s also, you know, connected to who licensed the vehicle, who the driver is, what insurance company, where they live. So you get the name, address, insurance company, you get all this information from that one plate.
And guess what? Highly, very easy, and very often that plate is being scanned all the time. You drive through a toll, right back to the AI, the computer AI, they’re taking that license plate. They’re running it through their systems. They’re checking the make and model of the vehicle.
Using Interconnectivity to Uncover Supply Chain Risks
It’s the breadcrumbs that make the picture, develops the story. If there’s a big hole in this, which is meaning, you know, it started off at the manufacturer, it was read 500 times throughout their systems. And then all of a sudden it goes to a trading partner. And then we never see that again, or we never saw it before the dispensary. We see it at the dispensary and we see it at retail and we see it at, in the hospital, but we never saw it at the trading partner or the manufacturer.
We never saw these things. It brings us back to that picture, right? It’s the forensics that we’re doing. Yeah. And all these bad things happen to go through this one choke point. So what’s going on in there? Why does everything go through this particular distributor, right? What’s going on there? So those kinds of things really empower the regulators to keep us safe.
And I think with Ozempic, yes, you could argue, well, how did it get there? You know, why did it get in? Well, there was a lot of fraudulent documents. You could also look at this and say, well, look how quickly the FDA got to the people involved, right? So I think that becomes a huge deterrent and I think that’s one of the things that I personally have learned: you can’t stop counterfeiting, but you can create speed bumps and you can make it difficult.
And then if you have this interlocking approach, where systems are connected, and you have information interoperability between the systems, you now get to put in metadata and get new insights like you’re suggesting, Reid, and it’s those insights that people can then glean important elements of what’s wrong with this particular item or this supply chain or this actor, right?
It’s just so fascinating to me. And I love how you brought in some of your other experiences. It makes us think of in June of every year, we run our annual user conference and it’s called Connect and it’s about connecting with others, but you’ve already brought it up.
You’ve brought up food, you’ve brought up healthcare, you brought up auto. We talked about e-commerce. I talked about apparel and general merchandise. It’s all supply chains. It’s all supply chains and they’re unique, but similar, but different, but we can all learn from one another. You just brought me back to this year when I was there and people are like, man, first time at Connect, and I know why they call it Connect now, because you get to connect with your peers at other places. But I digress.
Best Practices for Adapting to DSCSA Regulations
Let’s keep moving forward here because I know one thing that’s important to a lot of folks is. You know, I have to run my business, I have to keep it flowing. I have to deal with regulations, you know, new things that are coming in, but I still need to be efficient. I don’t want to cut corners, but I really want to be efficient and profitable myself for my business. I know a lot of people are out there thinking that, and I’m wondering if you have any recommendations for the DSCSA regulations that are here and you know, that are coming and the constantly moving environments of regulations.
Do you have some best practices or recommendations for folks out there that are dealing with these challenges day to day? Yes, I do. Because I think we’ve worked closely with both manufacturers and distributors. Um, so I think we see the challenges from a, um, consulting perspective, right? You know, 1 of the 1st things that.
We would advise people is that you really need to understand that evolving from lot level to item level traceability, it’s disruptive. So you have to embrace the fact that it is disruptive, but it does provide benefits. Like we were talking a few minutes ago, that single scan of that license plate gives you four pieces of information.
And if you’re required to track lot, it’s human readable, you know, in the lot level days, it was never machine readable. The only thing machine readable on the pharmaceutical is the linear code. And that basically just tells you what the drug is. So you don’t get the lot code, you don’t get the expiration, but you do get it through a single scan.
So it’s definitely, if you embrace that and integrate the reading of that into your environment, that really helps. I think One best practice suggestion is really understand your workflow, understand your workflow today, and then understand how it needs to change to comply. And through understanding the workflow, then you can understand the gaps of where you are and where you need to be.
And then how do you apply technology, right? Because, you know, yes, you can buy a system or a series of systems, but if you don’t really understand how they’re going to benefit your organization or disrupt your organization, then you’re going to be perhaps buying more technology than you need; and more importantly, not necessarily getting to where you need to be.
How Serialization Enables Better Inventory Accuracy
I think there are inherent (with serialization) much better precision on ordering, fulfillment, inventory, there’s also accountability for missing items. All of those things are going to enable efficiency and effectiveness in logistics. Shrinkage is a big issue, as you may have heard. Right, or has been with lot- level and without data, the party who sent the item, you know, you get back a message.
You, the order said, you ship me 100 items. I only got 75. I’m not paying for 100. I’m only going to pay for 75. and that’s the way the conversation was in lot level traceability. But now. If it’s about item level traceability, the conversation goes a little bit different. Okay, you said you only got 75. Well, I need you to scan in and tell me all 75 that you received.
Because guess what? I’m going to disable the 25 that I thought I sent you that you never received. I’ll give you credit. But by the way, don’t go use those 25 anywhere else. Because they’re now contraband, they’re now deemed missing. And that’s where the VRS, the Product Verification System that Gateway Checker has been instrumental in helping to start up, and GS1’s played a big role with the GS1 messaging standards.
That’s where those kind of things really make the difference, right? And if there’s some advice here is that if anybody in the supply chain could understand the benefits of what VRS provides, not about saleable returns. But through the lens of product verification, then I think our supply chains would be much more efficient and much more effective.
So in the example of shrinkage, someone stole those 25 off the truck on the sideline, thinks they can sell them. Well, at some point, that’s not going to be commerce. It’s not going to be able to be dispensed to a patient if people are verifying at every turn. And so that if that practice comes out less, people are going to want to steal anything because it’s really not going to have a market, at least not in the US. I’ll have to sell it somewhere else.
You mentioned it early on in our conversation. Bad actors look at this the exact same way. It’s just they want to make money. And not get caught. And they start to realize that there’s human things that happen. You know, like in the food industry, food gets delivered damaged.
Or some of it is rotten, so it has to be thrown away. But how do you know you weren’t there? They may just say that, oh, it was damaged, it was rotten, we threw it away. But they’re selling it on the side and they didn’t have to pay for it. So you’re kind of sharing these same examples and it’s for everyday folks.
I don’t think we think like that, but it’s quick and easy to see how it’s done and then gets diverted to different markets, right? I mean, that’s another challenge, right? Where they don’t necessarily have the same controls in place, right? Oh, it’s a, it’s a US good, so it must be good, right? Buying over the internet is also very similar to that, right?
Because if a consumer is trying to authenticate these medications, what tools do they have? You know, right now, VRS is not available to a consumer. So while, sure, barcode scanners exist, the technology is not open to them. So there’s no way for an individual consumer to authenticate what they’re buying.
And so if you’re relying on buying over the internet, you’ve got a much greater risk and you’re a much greater target for people, right? Because all bad actors have to do is make it. seem like it’s authentic. And when you don’t have the authentic product next to you, you can’t tell the difference.
One of the things I used to do early on was I would get real examples of counterfeit and real examples of good. And I take all sorts of pictures and I’d go through the exercise with the so called experts of various brands. And I’d say, all right, which is authentic, this one or this one. And I’d say about 80 to 90 percent of the time people would get it wrong. And these are the experts.
And the reason they get it wrong is because oftentimes, the packaging and the labeling is better on the counterfeit products than it is on the authentic ones because they farm it out, right? They get it to the lowest cost producer, right? And the bad actors have a better profit margin. They put their money, they have newer business, right? Yeah. Yeah. Less likelihood of getting caught, right?
You know? Yeah The more legitimate you make yourself seem right. So they’re taking their profits. So whereas, you know, someone’s maybe working on. You know, let’s just call it 10 percent profitability and, you know, they still have to comply and do all these things. Well, the bad actors aren’t complying and they’re making 25 percent profitability.
The Future of Supply Chain Integrity and AI Innovation
And I think it’s harder than that. Cause they don’t have to test, right? Reports, right. Putting that money back into it. It’s like a legit. Yeah. Wow. You really blown my brain there. Let’s talk about. The future, where do you see all of this going with traceability and supply chain integrity? Where do you see it going in the next 5 to 10?
Yeah, that’s a really, really good question. And one of which, you know, I put some time and energy into thinking about it. I think in the near term, the connections, the structure and the content quality and even information interoperability, as you said, the connections, all of that’s going to expand, and continue as, and it’s been very slow. This has been painful for some of us who’ve been doing this for a dozen years, right? Because all of these things have evolved, but sometimes much slower than we think possible or we expected, but it is happening. Even with this last delay by the FDA, I would say that about 80 percent of the manufacturers were ready in some way, but where about half of those failed was the reliability and robustness of their data.
Their ability to hit very high levels of accuracy. And I think that’s one of the things that we’re going to see in the near term is that we’re not only going to get information interoperability and more people connected and greater electronic information and we have to remember (and by the way, this was largely a paper-based system before the FDA came out with the DSCSA).
So that’s 1 of the things that’s changed. They said papers no longer good enough. It’s not even acceptable. It’s got to be electronic, but I think what you’re going to see is the quality. The quality of the data is going to improve. And then I think somewhere when that quality becomes. more reliable, more omnipresent, you’re going to see the data stock truly evolve to be more actionable, actionable information.
And we talked about the inner interconnected system of the automobile. Well, I think you’re going to get to that level of interconnectivity among the supply chain and the actionable insights that can come out of this greater scrutiny of the business is going to help the business address supply chain risk, Shortages, efficiency, integrity, and security.
So I think that’s where AI is probably going to start to play a role, right? It’s very good at analyzing large data sets. This data is voluminous, but you’re going to be able to understand discontinuities in this fabric of information that would be very hard for us to understand. I think at some point it’s going to tie back to ingredients. Right now, we talk about things in terms of a drug, but if you think about it, a drug has certain active ingredients and another drug even made from somebody else might have similar active ingredients. So, when we get into some of these shortages. It might actually be the active ingredient that’s causing the supply chain chokehold, and maybe people can start to foresee those things and start to adapt those things.
So I think one of the things for consumers might be greater availability. And I want to mention something about shortages, which I know I probably brought up a number of times: that’s great for the bad actors, right? Because shortages lead to desperation, and that also drives the price up too, by the way, and now you sort of come off your norm.
I’ve got to satisfy my patient. Oh, I’m buying it from Canada. Well, Canada is a friendly country. That’s okay, but you’re now buying it from someone who is not your usual partner, but he says he’s a direct wholesaler of this particular drug. Great. I read his website. It looks like he’s got great reviews.
I’m going to buy it from him. So, you know, that’s when there’s this frenzy. You have little time. You’re willing to do anything to satisfy your customer need. That also opens the door. For bad actors to come in. Yeah, it’s crazy the human engineering that bad actors prey upon. You know, the shortages, oh, you know, they build up these things, but then you even see the flip side of, well, we’re not going to be the cheapest because, you know, sometimes when you see the cheapest, you’re like, wait a second, I’m in this industry. It’s too cheap. Like, how could they do that? You know? And then they go the other side. Well, actually it’s more expensive because there’s such shortages out there and we’re the only legit one out. They play both sides and so easy to get manipulated within this.
Favorite Technology Used Today
Well, we’re coming to the end here and I’m. Just thrilled that you were able to spend some time with us and really share your knowledge and your experience over 20 plus years within this space and where it’s still going, because you mentioned slow evolution, but it’s complicated.
There’s a lot of players out there and we don’t want to like exclude one from another and big, medium, small, extra large, like, you know, all these different size companies and things doing it, it makes it very, very challenging. Well, we’re going to get into our last two questions. So it kind of deviates a little bit from the norm of the, of the conversation, but we’d like to know about you.
We always kind of end with this. And what is your favorite technology that you’re using today? Whether it be at work or personally, what’s just something that’s really helping you out? Yeah, that’s a really interesting question. I think it’s probably. Sort of a love hate relationship with our smartphones.
It does provide so much insight. I’m also very aware what a time sink that it is, but, you know, I’m probably no surprise to a lot of us trying to live long and healthy and the phone and it’s connected device. I’ve got my Fitbit, right? Those kind of things really do give us insight into what’s going on in our own bodies, and I think it’s very hard to get from our normal medicines and doctor visits and things like that. So, I am definitely a bit of a geek, if you will, when it comes to trying to understand what’s going on in my own body. That’s very interesting. I, um, just had my annual physical. Didn’t go as well as I wanted it to. It wasn’t bad. It wasn’t bad, but I was a little, little, little high on the weight side, but I’ve also been traveling for six weeks in a row. And what I noticed halfway through this six weeks in a row, I was sitting on a plane and just for whatever reason, looked down at my watch to see the time, but I noticed my heart rate.
My resting heart rate was 10 beats higher than my average resting heart rate, right? And I wasn’t stressed. I wasn’t anxious or anything, but it’s just, Being on a plane. So it’s interesting when you start to see these things, it gives you pause. I’m glad to hear that from you. Last question. What’s something you want to learn in very near future?
So we’re coming up 2025. What’s something you want to learn in the next year or two? Can I say to enjoy and enjoy and have a long life? That’s, that’s definitely a part of it. I think data analytics has always been interesting to me as well. To try to understand it, not so much predict the future, but you can sort of understand how you’re, how you’re progressing.
I’ve been reading some books on most of us die from one of the four diseases, but those diseases take many, many years to take root. And I think in the data, in the analytics, people are starting to find clues to that. So I think, It’s not just for me to try to live long, but to try to have a good, enjoyable life.
So try to find a way to, like you just said, Reid, you know, watch the fact that your heart rate is clicking up. I’d still believe it or not, play soccer and get out there 20 Sundays a year to play 90-minute matches. And I want to, you know, at my age, I never thought once I stopped playing in college and I got to play again in grad school, I thought, well, that’s it.
I’m never really playing this sport again. And the fact that I’m still playing it is great. But now I’m looking at, you know, it’s getting harder and harder every year. And it’s like, okay, how can I learn about my body? So that I can keep doing this, get into, you know, perhaps I can even play when I’m in my 70s.
I don’t know. I know people are doing it. And in our neck of the woods in the greater Boston area, we have a league where a lot of people are playing in this league. And that would be a nice goal. To be able to play without hurting myself. A lot of people are like, are you still doing that? You really, you know, you really shouldn’t. But for me, it actually keeps me young, but it also keeps me motivated to look at things like resting heart rate, like blood pressure and things like that, because I know that they make a difference.
Outro
Well, this is fantastic, Gary. We can’t enough for taking the time out of your day and sharing some, some experience and some knowledge and some predictions for supply chain integrity and the importance of traceability and the cross pollination across supply chains. This has been very helpful. Thank you again for spending the time with us.
And thank you, Reed. Thanks for all the energy you’ve put into these podcasts. And I really appreciate the opportunity to share, you know, what I’ve learned over the last 20 plus years.
Thank you for joining the Next Level Supply Chain with GS1US. If you enjoyed today’s show, you can subscribe to our feed or explore more great episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Don’t forget to share and follow us on social media. Thanks again, and we’ll see you next time.
