WHAT IS MEDICINES VERIFICATION?
Pharmaceutical manufacturers around the world increasingly serialise their medicinal products. They provide unique identifiers for each pack of medicine that they place in the market. These identifiers are printed as two-dimensional barcodes, often following GS1 healthcare standards.
By uploading their serial numbers to a trusted repository, manufacturers enable pack verification at any location throughout the supply chain or beyond, including the point of dispense, in healthcare institutions or even in the patient’s own home.
By scanning the barcode, clinicians and patients increase their confidence in the authenticity of each pack of medicine. If a unique identifier fails the test, alerts help manufacturers identify potential falsification or diversion and provide visibility to regulatory authorities. If the pack has expired, or if the batch has been recalled, this is immediately reported to the user, ensuring that substandard products are never used.
The unique identifier creates a ‘digital twin’ for each commissioned pack, allowing it to be tracked across the supply chain until it is supplied or decommissioned. This allows the provenance of each pack to be determined and helps to detect unusual movements or events that may signify falsification or diversion. By integrating with other systems, the verification system can support other needs such as closed-loop medicine management in healthcare institutions, national pharmacovigilance and detection of reimbursement fraud.