In advance of new European measures to help reduce counterfeit medicines, Wayne Miller, healthcare director EMEA at Zebra Technologies, asks if the pharmaceutical supply chain is ready for true medicine traceability.
Traceability
More than 400,000 pharmacies in Europe will be impacted by European Directive 2011/62/EU, ratified by the European Parliament in 2016 and effective in February 2019. The intent of this measure is to prevent the introduction of illegal medicine into the legal supply chain. This means pharmaceutical industry players must consolidate their medicine traceability practices to fight a rise in medicine counterfeiting. What lessons can be learnt from this supply chain revolution?