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Introduction: Words
like “counterfeiting” and “out of stock” are anathema to
any industry, but for pharmaceuticals the implications
are particularly significant. Radio Frequency
Identification, or RFID, has the potential to nearly
eradicate such issues. The idea of tagging and tracking
the whereabouts of drugs is quite complicated, but RFID
could play a pivotal role in overcoming the above
problem.
RFID technology uses RFID tags affixed on cases or
consignments and a serialized Electronic Product Code (EPC)
for identification to facilitate detection of
counterfeit pharma drugs and medical supplies globally.
This benefits all the stakeholders like pharma
manufacturers, health regulators and the pharma
distribution chain covering chemists and druggists,
stockists and most of all-the consumers. RFID helps in
optimising supply chain, which would enable to achieve
30 percent stock reduction, 30 percent increase in value
added time and seven percent reduction in supply chain
costs.
Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is an auto-ID
system. Automatic identification, or auto ID for short,
is the broad term given to a host of technologies that
are used to help machines identify objects.
Auto-identification is often coupled with automatic data
capture. To identify items, the information about them
is captured and then the data is fed into a computer
without having employees input. The aim of most auto-ID
systems is to increase efficiency, reduce data entry
errors, to make it more difficult for illegitimate and
rogue operators to develop entry points within the
distribution network and to facilitate verification of a
product's chain of custody. The technologies that fall
under the auto-ID umbrella are bar codes, smart cards,
voice recognition, some biometric technologies (retinal
scans, for instance), optical character recognition
(OCR) and radio frequency identification. (RFID)
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