With the Centre’s call for 300 pharma brands to sport quick response (QR) / bar codes, completing a year this August, it needs to be expanded to more products, and standardized across different users, say industry voices.
Most drugmakers have implemented the requirement and “a good start” has been made, says S. Swaminathan, Chief Executive Officer of GS1 India, a global standards organization.
But to derive benefits from such a system, it needs to be aligned across the healthcare supply chain, point of sale, hospitals and so on, he explains.
“The scanning is happening and data is getting displayed, as per the notification,“ he said. But alignment in using the same barcode across the healthcare supply chain is not happening, Swaminathan told businessline, as the structure of the code and formats, for example, are different, as companies have adopted their own methods. The need is for “neutral, vendor agnostic and interoperable standards”, he points out.
A chemist, for instance, stocks multiple medicines from various suppliers. On an average, pharmacy chains have 20,000 SKUs (stock keeping units) from nearly 1000 brands, he explains. There needs to be a standardized structured format, irrespective of the manufacturer, he explains.
The coding system now needs to be applied to medical devices as well, says Swaminathan. Like pharmaceuticals, some medical devices also get into the human body, and a trackable code helps in supply chain management, recalls, mapping side-effects, etc, he explains. The time has come to fast-track the unique device identifier (UDI) system, he adds.
GS1 has been set up by the Commerce Ministry, industry bodies and the Bureau of Indian Standards, to outline global standards that facilitate transfer of product information. It is an affiliate of Brussels-headquarters GS1 Global.
Explaining the rationale to expand the initiative, Swaminathan says, 300 (covering about 56-odd companies) is a small part of the entire basket of drugs. It needs to be implemented over another 1000-plus products, distributors, chemists, point of sale, hospitals and so on, for patient safety, he adds. The benefits will come when chemists start scanning these codes instead of putting their own stickers, he says, adding it would require small changes at their end.
Beat counterfeiters
Several large pharma industry representatives agree with the need to expand the initiative to more products; some of them going with higher technology, to beat counterfeiters.
Mankind Pharma Chief Executive Sheetal Arorapoints to the complex logistics across the country and adds that the pharma industry and consumers need to take responsibility.
The sector is vast, fragmented and has one of the most complex supply chains globally, he says, adding “We have around 10,000 manufacturing plants in India, and there are around 75,000 stockists or CNFs, sub-stockists and around ten lakh pharmacy counters in India - from Kanyakumari to Kashmir, from Guwahati to Mumbai.”
Consumers too should look for not just the expiry date, along with discounts – but also check the font, grammatical mistakes, color, discoloration and degradation, says Arora. In Mankind’s case, he says, they have advanced counterfeit packaging features that are complex and difficult to replicate.