Marking and coding system tracks pharmaceuticals' journey to customers

A filling machine places individual pills into a pouch and then seals them into a blister-pack. Tjoapack’s packaging line prints a unique code for each pill in the package that can be used to identify and track it all the way through the supply chain to the final consumer.

With billions of prescription pills and tablets being packaged and shipped around the world each year, it would be easy to slip in a few tens of thousands of counterfeit pieces or divert a couple shipments of expensive medications to a black market in another country. The existing systems just haven't had the capacity to effectively track all products through the supply chain. This may be changing.

Governments around the world are instituting regulations to manage counterfeiting, diversion and reimbursement fraud while improving manufacturing quality control. These rules and guidelines often require the printing and encoding of unique data that go right onto the package, causing pharmaceutical companies and contract packagers to scramble in order to meet all the requirements of every jurisdiction where they may be shipping their products. In effect, they are establishing an “electronic pedigree” for the prescription drugs.

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