Last week, Brazil’s pharma industry regulatory agency, the National Agency of Sanitary Surveillance (ANVISA), announced that they were “suspending” at least part of RDC-54/2013, the declaration that mandated drug serialization and tracing, until further notice. Thank you to all who forwarded the link to the official announcement. I was able to translate and read it on Thursday, and I submitted a comment on my own last essay, “Pharma Serialization Deadlines In Flux“, to include the link. Apparently shortly after that essay was published, ANVISA Continue reading Brazil Suspends Pharma Serialization And Tracing Requirements
Category Archives: ANVISA
Why Does ANVISA Embrace GS1 Standards, Except The Serial Number?
In Brazil, the National Agency of Sanitary Surveillance (ANVISA) has built their pharma serialization regulation around GS1 standards. They embrace the GS1 Datamatrix and GS1-128, both encoded with GS1 Application Identifiers (AI) and using GS1 Human Readable Interpretation (HRI) (see my previous essay, “The ANVISA Unique Medicine Identifier (IUM) on Drug Packages”, for my thoughts on HRI), the GS1 Global Trade Item Number (GTIN) and the GS1 Serial Shipping Container Code (SSCC) to be specific. But there is one GS1 standard they steer clear of: the GS1 serial number. Why is that? Continue reading Why Does ANVISA Embrace GS1 Standards, Except The Serial Number?
The ANVISA Unique Medicine Identifier (IUM) on Drug Packages
Last week I wrote about the DSCSA Product Identifier on Drug Packages in the United States. Last month I wrote about shipping container/transport package identification under the Brazil National Medicine Control System (SNCM) (see “ANVISA And The SSCC Controversy”). Today I will take a look at drug package identifiers under the SNCM as regulated there by the National Agency of Sanitary Surveillance (ANVISA). Most of the factual information included here is based on Continue reading The ANVISA Unique Medicine Identifier (IUM) on Drug Packages
ANVISA And The SSCC Controversy
GS1’s Serial Shipping Container Code, or SSCC, has been around a long time, but the logistics identifier has recently taken center-stage in a number of controversies related to meeting several country-specific pharma traceability regulations. I’ll cover these controversies in multiple essays—in this one, Brazil.
This controversy started when ANVISA, the pharma regulator in Brazil, indicated in their regulations that they expected companies to mark every “transport package” entering their supply chain with a unique identification code so that each serialized unit inside can be associated with it (the aggregation requirement).
The problem is, a homogeneous case of product can Continue reading ANVISA And The SSCC Controversy