Vestara, the healthcare industry's only provider of automated pharmaceutical waste management solutions, announced a strategic partnership with EXP Pharmaceutical Services Corp., a premier pharmaceutical returns & pharmacy services company.

The Vestara-EXP partnership stems from both companies' recognition of the industry's need for an effective solution that will allow healthcare entities to properly manage pharmaceutical waste and play a key role in helping to preserve the environment.

"EXP has seen the increasing need of a turnkey solution for easily and compliantly managing pharmaceutical waste in US hospitals. Vestara's EcoRex addresses that need, and we are very excited to offer a solution that will empower our clients to help preserve the environment, be compliant, and cut costs," said Kirk Herweck, EXP's director of National Accounts and Business Development.

Through this partnership, EXP's current and future clientele will be offered market-leading pricing and service for Vestara's EcoRex, the industry's only, and patented, Automated Pharmaceutical Waste Management Solution. This make-sense solution automates the pharmaceutical waste management and sorting process, while providing data tracking with a manifest for every piece of pharmaceutical waste that is disposed.

EXP serves 70 per cent of the US hospital-based Reverse Distribution Market, represented by over 5,000 hospital customers. In addition to its well-established market dominance, EXP also has one of the most experienced regulatory-compliance staffs in the industry. EXP will actively offer and provide details of the Vestara solution in each of its client consultations, going forward.

"EXP's market leadership is a key component to this partnership. Instantly, Vestara's Pharmaceutical Waste Management Solution is available to over 70 per cent of US hospitals. We applaud EXP for taking a stand in providing to their customers an effective tool in defense of the environment," said Jon D. Holder, Vestara's vice president of Business Development.

Vestara's EcoRex Automated Pharmaceutical Waste Management System utilizes barcode technology already widely used in hospitals to track drug utilization that prevents medication errors through a proprietary, continuously -updated database of more than 180,000 National Drug Code (NDC) products, to instantly categorize pharmaceutical waste at time of presentation.

By automating the identification and sorting of different types of residual drugs, empty containers, and each hospital's unique admixtures, EcoRex eliminates the human error and potential cross contamination inherent in manual sorting of pharmaceutical waste reducing the negative impact on the environment. Just as important, relevant data and an audit trail are provided in the form of comprehensive reports for client records.

Vestara, headquartered in Irvine, California, provides proprietary technology to automatically identify, sort, and segregate hazardous and non-hazardous pharmaceutical waste into proper waste streams.

EXP Pharmaceutical Services Corp. provides reverse distribution services for the return and destruction of expired and unwanted pharmaceuticals. EXP is a leading member of the pharmaceutical reverse distribution industry specializing in product returns processing and other pharmacy services such as physical inventory and end-to end recall solutions.