Pharmaceuticals

General description

Pharmaceutical supply chain management isn’t just about cutting costs and improving efficiency. By keeping counterfeits off the market, it can save lives and protect a company’s brand reputation too.

The huge pharmaceutical market is a tempting target for counterfeiters. In fact, the World Health Organisation estimates that upwards of 10% of drugs worldwide are counterfeit. In some individual regions and countries, the figure can be as high as 70%.

Because they are not as effective as the real thing, counterfeit drugs do huge damage to a brand’s reputation. This in turn affects the manufacturer’s standing and ability to fund research into new medicines.

Drugs that are RFID tagged at the pallet, case and package level can be quickly and accurately tracked from the manufacturer to the pharmacy. As they enter and leave each link in the supply chain from manufacturer to retailer, the drugs are scanned and checked for orginality. Any counterfeits can be identified immediately and removed from circulation before they do harm.

RFID can also improve operational efficiency throughout the pharmaceutical supply chain. This helps ensure a consistent supply of medicines while reducing costly overstocking and return of out-of-date drugs – saving the industry billions of dollars each year.

Tracking individual items give complete transparency over a supply chain. However, reading tags placed on, or even in densely packed bottles containing liquids or metal-foil pill packages, can be a real challenge.

Using HF technology for item level tagging makes the RFID solution more resilient to environmental factors and provides compliance with the ISM (Industrial, Scientific, and Medical) radio band and globally harmonized frequency regulations. NXP’s ICODE UID OTP smart label IC is a perfect example. Specifically designed for the pharmaceutical market, it provides security and efficiency, helping to safeguard business and lives.

One of the biggest challenges facing the adoption of RFID is a global standard fulfilling the specific requirements of the pharmaceutical supply chain. This is being addressed through the work of EPCglobal, which has already defined standards for UHF labels and is currently driving the definition and ratification of a new High Frequency (HF) EPC V2 standard. It combines the existing EPC Gen2 logical layer with a HF analog front-end, leveraging the speed and command set of the Gen2 protocol in combination with the benchmark reliability of the HF interface.

The emergence of a strong global standard will enable manufacturers to deliver cost effective solutions and will eliminate interoperability problems, improve quality and ultimately drive mass adoption.

Customer benefits

• Prevent potentially deadly fake medicines reaching the market
• Efficient technology for pedigree and regulative compliance
• Protection for your brand’s reputation
• Reduce inventory costs and out-of-stock revenue losses, and enhance reverse logistics

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