There is a long-running tug-of-war going on between GS1 and national governments around the world over how exactly to identify medical products, whether devices or pharmaceuticals. National governments regulate those products to maximize the health of their citizens and so they take a natural interest in how they are identified. They want to eliminate all ambiguity between products within their market. They need to be able to tightly grant market authorization, revoke it and oversee recalls when warranted. To do that effectively, they need a way of clearly and concisely referencing a given product. That same way of referencing the product should also be used for patient education and for healthcare professional prescribing. Bad things happen when mistakes are made in the identification of healthcare products.
GS1 offers a global standard way of identifying Continue reading Product Identification And National Registration Codes
Part 1
After November 27, 2017 the U.S. 
Dear FDA,
Drug verification is at the heart of most pharma serialization regulations. It is the point at which someone in the supply chain or a patient uses the unique identifier on the drug package to determine that the drug is probably authentic, or definitely is not. We can tell a lot about the intent of a given serialization regulation by looking at the specific language that determines by whom and when a unique identifier must be verified. 
As serialization mandates sweep the world you would think that drug manufacturers and repackagers would just deploy one generic “serialization application” and simply turn it on for any drugs that requires it, and turn it off for any that do not. That’s probably what the legislatures and regulators who create the requirements think. RxTrace readers know it’s not nearly that easy.
