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The year was 1988. Americans were obsessed with Rubik’s cubes, boom boxes, and all types of arcade games. At the same time, substance abuse was gripping the country and the workplace was not immune from its devasting, costly, and sometimes fatal effects. Employers were just beginning to adopt comprehensive drug-free workplace programs that included drug testing applicants and employees. To support these programs, a brand-new industry started coming into existence—the drug testing industry.
It was also the year that DrugPak came into existence, a company offering a state-of-the-art, off-the-shelf software package designed to help employers and drug testing providers manage the complex flow of information as individual drug tests progressed from sample collection to final result. As workplace drug testing exploded in popularity in the late 1980s and throughout the decade of the ‘90s, DrugPak became the management software of choice for hundreds of third-party administrators (TPAs), collection sites, medical review officers (MROs), and other providers of drug testing services along with employers who chose to manage their programs internally.
Today, as DrugPak prepares to celebrate its 35th anniversary, it is now a secure web-based, mobile-enabled, software service that is flexible, scalable, and able to meet any organization’s information management needs.
“Really, it’s our customers who have made DrugPak what it is,” said David Goncalves, DrugPak’s general manager for the past 20-plus years. “Every module, virtually every feature, has been designed and refined to handle specific real-world customer requirements.”
Of course, as drug testing itself has progressed it’s become more complicated. Thousands of brick-and-mortar collection facilities have to be managed in conjunction with multiple laboratories and/or point-of-collection devices to make the entire process as seamless as possible for the end user. And DrugPak has progressed along with the needs of the industry.
“We have continually evolved over the past three-plus decades,” Goncalves said. “Currently we are accepting customer requests and publishing new features on a monthly basis.”
As the drug testing world has become more complex, the needs of those who are part of it have also become more specific. While many long-time DrugPak users find precisely what they need in DrugPak’s standard software offering, others require highly customized solutions. As such, DrugPak offers Enterprise arrangements that are based on the creation of a software package that targets a particular customer’s unique circumstances. Because of this, it is possible to say that DrugPak is many things to its many customers with some utilizing a software configuration that no other company has.
“That’s when it gets fun for us,” Goncalves enthused. “We love starting with DrugPak’s base package, which in and of itself is very advanced and capable, doing virtually anything most customers need, and then adding bespoke features and integrations. Call me nerdy, but I love working with Enterprise customers to optimize and automate workflows.”
In a recent series of social media ads, DrugPak posed “what if” questions like: “What if documents automatically linked to test result records?” or “What if random selections ran automatically every quarter?” Of course, the response to these questions is “DrugPak does it!” And, as Goncalves adds, DrugPak does a whole lot more.
“There really is nothing DrugPak can’t do or, with a little tweaking, can’t be programmed to do,” Goncalves said.
DrugPak’s recently upgraded website (drugpak.com) highlights specific qualities to their services, including among a host of things:
- Effortless Random Selections
- Secure Reporting
- Client Portal
- Flexible Billing
- Complete Document Management
DrugPak also offers Screenhubb, an on-line system that provides a safe, secure portal for clients to log in and access a vast resource of support tools and videos. For instance, DrugPak customers can browse DrugPak’s knowledge center, create and track support tickets, oversee system users, view dashboards, and quickly monitor results and the status of everything associated with their drug testing program.
Goncalves explained, “Screenhubb is the overarching application environment that all our applications run in. With centralized security and account management, users access a variety of discrete applications, including DrugPak, MRO Pro, Automation Server, Technical Support, Knowledge Center, and Marketplace, not to mention entirely custom applications.”
While Screenhubb Marketplace is still in the process of being populated with services from leading drug testing providers, it is indicative of what makes DrugPak a leader in a very competitive field… and people in the industry recognize this.
“We’re very proud of the fact that we are ranked among the top recognized brands in the drug testing software industry,” Goncalves noted. “And I think a large part of the reason for that is we’re still here all these years later. Many other software products and companies have come and gone, or have gone through dramatic overhauls, but DrugPak has been a steady, reliable software solution for more than three decades. We have customers who have been with us nearly from the beginning.”
“Add to that the fact that we have continued to progress, always improving our software, expanding what it’s capable of doing, and creating customized solutions. It’s easy to see why we’re always recognized as a top provider,” Goncalves said.
MROs, TPAs and employers who want to learn how DrugPak can take their drug screening program and services to a whole new level, can visit DrugPak’s website at drugpak.com or call them at 800-321-7826 or email them at sales@drugpak.com.
