Track & Trace

Scammers are selling dangerous fake coronavirus vaccines on the internet, Switzerland’s health regulator Swissmedic warned on Tuesday.

Pour respecter les préconisations de l’Administration Américaine, Food and Drug Administration (FDA), il a été développé une méthode innovante de marquage de produits injectables stérilisés, de manière à préserver les bouchons ou les joints des fioles, libres pour l’usage de marquage de sécurité, ces zones étant les plus accessibles et visibles par tout professionnel de la Santé.

Whether being used for customer-facing information or bright stocking, coding injectable products are inherently challenging, given the small size and reduced radius of the packaging. Integrating the coding solution into OEM equipment provides improved product control, leading to higher quality human and
machine readable codes.

The need to verify the authenticity of medical equipment and now vaccines, which are on the front line of the fight against COVID-19, has never been greater. Sadly they are also prime targets for counterfeiters. It is imperative to authenticate these products. TrueMed, a Finland-based tech start-up, says it has come up with the first end-to-end counterfeit medicine detection able to be accessed from every pocket.

Avery Dennison is partnering with Schreiner MediPharm and PragmatIC to leverage NFC technology by extending smart packaging to the unit-level for everyday pharma products to improve patient safety and experience.
NFC technology can offer several important functionalities such as tamper evidence, secure authentication, end-to-end traceability, and easy re-ordering. In the case of pharmaceutical products, it can also connect the patient to easy-to-read instructions, video/audio guides, helplines, social media support groups, and even to their doctor or clinician.

Accenture asked 12,000 patients in six countries about their experiences with services from pharma companies. Despite increased pharma investment and evidence that patients value these services we found no corresponding increase in awareness and utilization. Patient services have proliferated, and the landscape is fragmented creating too much noise. Patients are open to new models of care as a result of COVID-19, and digital technologies will be key to clarify and amplify the message.

To safeguard drug supplies, pharmaceutical companies should go beyond simple regulatory compliance by tapping into the transformational and unrealized business value of track-and-trace packaging technology.

Cathay Pacific Cargo is progressively rolling out Ultra Track as a key part of the vaccine solution. The next-generation track-and-trace system monitors information including temperature, GPS location, and humidity, using low-energy Bluetooth readers. This gives shippers and forwarders near real time visibility, and ensures vaccines will remain within their transportation temperature ranges.

From digital records such as email to electronic files like product labels, your organization has thousands of digital documents that need to be reproduced, printed, shared and store every day. Those documents—your intellectual property and important business assets—are highly vulnerable to a variety of threats.

Digitalisation is extending packaging’s traditional role and opening up a whole world of new opportunities. Enabled by a unique code on every package, connectivity allows producers to turn their products into data carriers. Package codes can enhance consumer engagement while also gathering information in a valuable two-way feedback loop.

AR continues to evolve and take shape as an industry. Prominent sectors include industrial AR, social, gaming, and shopping. But existing alongside them is AR advertising. This includes paid/sponsored AR lenses that let consumers visualize products on “spaces & faces.”

The consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry is an ever-growing one with increasing demands as well as concerns from its consumers. There has been a need for more information about the products being manufactured and sold.
To cater to consumer needs, product packaging can be utilized as a significant medium through which CPG brands can achieve product transparency. The use of transparent packaging can help companies build a higher level of trust with their consumers and improve customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Track and trace solutions provider Covectra has introded AuthentiTrack Prime for Small to Medium-sized Businesses (SMB), a complete product serialization solution designed to make it easier for growing manufacturers to meet compliance needs, maximize uptime and ensure product integrity with semi-automatic or manual, low-volume packaging operation.

SEA Vision has developed the first solution available on the market for the identification and serialization of primary packaging (blisters, trays, sachets, etc.) or related sub-units (single-dose blisters) in collaboration with leading digital printing firm Domino Printing and with the Irish company Gallarus Industries Solution. This solution is strategic when this kind of packaging is distributed or when it is used separately from its original pack both by the end user or other parties along the distribution chain (for example in hospitals or pharmacies in developing countries). This separation from the secondary packaging is in fact a manipulation of the original product, thus creating a potential real risk for patient’s health.

Speaking to the Cold Chain Council in Chicago in early October, Ulrich talked global serialization, how to secure a global supply chain, and how to add value beyond compliance. He said that while a pharmaceutical manufacturer may think they are “done” with a product after it is produced, counterfeits and diversion exist, so companies must consider how to safely get the product from manufacturing facility to the patient.

While not limited to use in pharmaceutical and medical markets, anti-counterfeiting features for packages used by these markets help protect patients and profits.

Under regulatory pressure, a large number of pharmaceutical manufacturers, shippers and wholesalers are adopting blockchain to track and trace prescription drugs.

A few years ago many companies didn’t pay much attention to pharmaceutical packaging, at least in terms of the consumer. Today, marketing to the consumer is extremely important. That means taking note of message delivery as well as items ranging from printable electronics to augment the plastic bags, polystyrene containers, pharmaceutical collapsible aluminum tubes and cardboard boxes used to package the product.

Symtuza (darunavir/cobicistat/emtricitabine/tenofovir alafenamide) – part of an HIV franchise that is worth around $2bn in revenues a year to J&J – is indicated for the treatment of HIV in adults and adolescents aged 12 or over by the FDA.

The FDA publicized a voluntary recall this week of two types of medication that ended up in the same bottles. The pharmaceutical company AvKARE issued the recall after the pills, one currently used for erectile dysfunction and the other, an antidepressant, had been used off label for the same problem, got packaged together by accident.

“The problem with serialization and other packaging level measures is that once tablets and capsules are removed from the packaging or containers, all bets are off​,” he told OSP. “Fake products can be easily substituted into genuine packaging, and the supply chain is none the wiser.​”

Traceability at the individual container level could become very important to drive patient safety through the prevention of product mix-up. There are other strong business drivers for uniquely coded containers. These include improved batch visibility and accountability whilst simplifying investigation work in case of potential deviations during fill and finish operations. This reduces risk and can limit the direct financial impact from missed revenue or drug shortages.

Pharma business is undergoing a major transformation on multiple concurrent areas affecting the whole product lifecycle from the medicine development to the patient care.

Image annotation services are becoming increasingly popular as it enables analysis and synthesis of information. Image annotation techniques can be of significant use to businesses across different industry sectors, including e-commerce, and helps online sellers maintain an efficiently searchable product database. However, maintaining the required infrastructure and hiring an in-house team is time-consuming and involves huge operational costs and administrative hassles.