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RFID Applications: California dreamin'

Pedigree compromise in Golden State has RFID vendors expecting wider drug industry adoption.

One of the big buzzes coming out of the RFID Applications conference in Washington, D.C., in late September was news of the deal cut by the state of California and the drug industry on drug pedigrees.

In late August, California agreed to delay imposition of the most onerous e-pedigree requirement in the country, which was supposed to have gone into effect on January 1, 2007. In exchange for the delay of two years, drug industry players agreed that all pedigrees accompanying drug packages as of January 1, 2009 would be both electronic and item-level.

That deal was then translated into legislation, which, at the end of September, was awaiting the signature of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. 

This is huge

“This is huge,” emphasized Andres Botero, director of RFID program management at SAP, which works with 90 percent of U.S. drug manufacturers and has been involved in almost all the RFID pilots and rollouts up until now. “Our phones have been ringing off the hook for the past month. The California action is galvanizing the pharmaceutical industry.”

A drug manufacturer would not have to use RFID to satisfy the California requirement; bar codes would work, too. “But RFID has an advantage because reading the tags doesn't require line of sight, as is the case with a bar code,” Botero added.

Bruce Hastings, manager of packaging engineering services for Eisai, the Japanese drug company whose main two products are Aricept and Aciphex, an Alzheimer's and gastrointestinal drug, was unaware of the California news until he heard Botero's presentation. Eisai's American subsidiary sells into California.
“I was surprised to hear that,” he said. “We are very interested in implementing a pilot program testing both RFID and barcodes.”

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