The slick 96-page magazine chronicles more than 20 case histories, including several of interest to packagers, drawn from the IDTechEx RFID Knowledgebase of nearly 2ꯠ applications.
One of those is a 2-page report on a U.K.-U.S. drug authentication pilot that includes Merck Generics U.K., Merck Pharmaceuticals, Novartis, Schering Health Care, and Solvay. Delivery company DHL distributed the tagged products to participating pharmacies during the trial. Trials in the U.K. were completed in 2005 and trials in the US will end in 2006 with commercialization expected in 2006.
“The scanner has proved a very innovative addition to the dispensing process, and the extra checking step has increased our confidence that the selected item is both correctly dispensed and genuine.”
The pilot involves unique serialization with both RFID and bar-coding that enhances anti-counterfeiting of drugs. The high-frequency 13.5 MHz read-only tags are supplied by UPMRaflatac (www.raflatac.com); readers are supplied by Philips (www.philips.com) and the system integrator is Aegate (www.aegate.com).
The report states that the primary purpose of the initial U.K. pilot was to determine if pharmacists would accept a step change in their dispensing process to conduct a scanner-based authenticity check of medicines before dispensing.
A total of 44 pharmacies across England and Wales took part in the pilot study conducted between October 2004 and January 2006. The study involved more than 180ꯠ pharmaceutical products ranging from needles to Nurofen (an ibuprofen product). The packaged products were scanned and checked for authenticity at the point of dispensing by the pharmacist using a custom-built RFID scanner. The drug was authenticated if it matched details stored on a secure database, and rejected if not recognized.
“We’re always interested in ways to help improve the service we provide to our customers especially if it is related to patient safety,” said Fliss Davies of Cordon Pharmacy. “The scanner has proved a very innovative addition to the dispensing process, and the extra checking step has increased our confidence that the selected item is both correctly dispensed and genuine.”
Further copies of the report are available through the IDTechEx.com Web site.
