Incorporating workers into your organization’s digital transformation/IoT journey benefits everyone – employers and employees

Three primary advantages pharmaceutical companies hope to gain by embracing the Internet of Things (IoT), which connects systems and processes from the physical world to the digital world, are stronger data integrity, compliance, and efficiency.

By choosing Nymi’s enterprise-ready solution, a company will achieve all three priorities:

  • Stronger data integrity – because the system will know who is signing off on which processes through simple-to-use biometric, multifactor, and continuous authentication
  • Compliance – for audit trails, privacy laws and so on
  • Efficiency – because people connect to their workplace only once at the beginning of their shift and can go passwordless and contactless in their interactions with all corporate systems

Employees are yet to be digitally integrated as assets to their workplace, like the many systems that comprise modern businesses. The Nymi Connected Worker Platform allows for this to happen simply and securely.

Each worker wears a Nymi BandTM, which is used to authenticate and connect them to the platform, thereby streamlining their digital connectivity to all the technologies they use daily. The Connected Worker Platform manages the flow of people data and can make the employees a part of an organisation’s IoT/IoE strategy.

Of course, the platform is built with the strongest architecture for hardware and software security, personal privacy, and user experience with Nymi’s expertise at its heart, supported by partnerships with leading technology hardware and software service providers. By connecting the worker to the enterprise in this way, organisations can unlock the power of true digital transformation by adding its workforce to its Internet of Things, and thus, moving into the Internet of Everything.

There are many benefits to pharmaceutical companies adopting a connected worker system. As they have to comply with strict GxP rules, a solution that can support every ‘x’ state that is important to the industry is going to be their favourite choice.

The Nymi Connected Worker Platform provides all the elements of a streamlined and secure employee experience while meeting the rules and regulations of different global standards. Some of these elements are:

Data integrity

The safety, potency, and quality of regulated products and services are key benefits of data integrity. It prevents the possibility of inadvertently losing data, or of misapprehension of data that is available. It also helps in tracing and verification in case of anomalous results.

The Connected Worker Platform establishes unmatched identity assurance through its innovative use of biometrics (fingerprint + heartbeat), On-Body Detection, and presence-awareness. Thus, strengthening data integrity for organizations, while making it easier for workers to do their jobs.

Additionally, data lifecycle, controls, and culture need to be implemented in any organisation. The Nymi Connected Worker Platform has these considerations in its protocols when working with a new client to analyse the best way to integrate the platform with the client’s systems and processes. This ensures that if and when called upon to prove the quality of its products and processes, the client will be able to provide this information to inspectors.

Security

A key part of the platform’s security architecture is a Zero-Trust framework that continuously authenticates workers via their Nymi BandTM. The Nymi Band is a wearable device purpose-built for pharma environments that connects people to the Nymi Connected Worker Platform. It is activated by employees using a combination of their biometrics (fingerprint and heartbeat), which are uniquely protected in a Privacy by Design framework.

At enrolment, the user’s fingerprint is transformed into a unique ID profile by a mathematical algorithm; the resultant algorithm is stored on a chip in the band and the enrollment fingerprint scan is discarded.

As a workplace wearable, its design and purpose are distinct from personal wearables, like Apple watches or Fitbits. The Nymi Band is held to higher standards of security and privacy protocols as both employer and employee interests are involved. For example, the wearable can be set to support health and safety use cases, like social distancing and contact tracing without location tracking. This is all accomplished within the most stringent principles of GDPR and other consumer privacy laws.

Compliance with GxP

Pharmaceutical manufacturing companies need to comply with the regulations and guidelines relating to food and medical products like drugs, medical devices, and related software applications. They also need corporate processes in place to be able to prove this compliance with the manufacture, control, storage, and distribution of their products to external regulators and inspectors.

Businesses that produce goods in highly regulated industries must not only have strict procedures in place to ensure their manufacturing process and products are of the highest quality conforming to relevant standards, but they must also be able to prove this compliance with audited records. The Nymi Connected Worker Platform establishes a way for organizations to provide this information reliably, to internal or external auditors in accordance with the FDA’s standard 21 CFR Part 11: Electronic Records and Signatures.

Efficiency

As previously mentioned, the Nymi Connected Worker Platform leverages strong security elements, such as biometric-based authentication and On-Body Detection. These security controls also provide employees with a new paradigm for interacting with systems and applications with contactless and presence-aware, intent-based gestures. For example, logging into a computer terminal can be done with a contactless tap of the wrist while fully gowned in PPE versus having to stop work, expose the hands, and manually authenticate hundreds of times per day. Logging out of that same terminal could also be configured based on an employee walking away from their computer versus having to manually log out or use unsecure time-based logouts.

These are just some of the ways in which a connected pharma worker moves seamlessly throughout their day to perform their different job functions. Essentially, on a platform employees can connect to and access whichever system, application, or network they need to perform their daily tasks.

Connecting workers to their digital world, as you would digitize other assets of your business, allows organizations to mature their IoT strategies and unlock the true power of digital transformation. Specifically in pharma, Nymi customers see greater data integrity, compliance, and efficiency, along with a host of other benefits, such as unified security, user privacy, worker health and safety, and more. Clients can also rest assured that Nymi’s compliance with global quality standards and their wide range of technology partners means that they can integrate their platform into your company’s legacy architecture.

Further details:

For more information, please visit Nymi’s Connected Worker Platform page