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California dreamin'

Drug ‘pedigree' compromise in Golden State has RFID vendors expecting wider drug industry adoption.

MULTI-LAYERED PROTECTION. West Spectra™ RFID, a West Pharmaceutical Services' product, provides drug manufacturers with mul
MULTI-LAYERED PROTECTION. West Spectra™ RFID, a West Pharmaceutical Services' product, provides drug manufacturers with mul

One of the big buzzes coming out of the RFID applications conference in Washington, DC, in late September was news of the deal cut by the state of California and the drug industry on drug pedigrees. RFID, of course, is Radio-Frequency Identification, which is essentially a chip and antenna that can be programmed with product information more complete than that provided by bar codes. RFID requires special scanners to capture the data.

In late August, California agreed to delay imposition of the most onerous electronic 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 companies 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 signed into law by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

“This is huge,” emphasized Andres Botero, director of RFID program management at SAP (www.sap.com/index.epx), which works with 90% of U.S. drug manufacturers and has been involved in almost all the RFID pilots and rollouts 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 bar codes,” 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 bar codes.”

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