Over the last couple of years, there has been a growing interest in traceability in healthcare, especially when it comes to drug safety. This is happening because just like in any other industry, there are always concerns about counterfeit drugs or healthcare products hitting the market in the healthcare sector.
Globally, counterfeit medicine proliferation is a more significant public health threat than diseases they purport to cure. The World Health Organization (WHO) uses labels like “substandard”, “falsely labelled”, “falsified”, and “counterfeit” to characterize medicines that are forged to seem genuine.
In fact, according to Authentication Solutions Providers’ Association (ASPA), a non-profit organization that deals with anti-counterfeit awareness, incidents of sub-standard and falsified (SF) medical products increased by almost 47 per cent from 2020 to 2021. This was mainly fueled by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The reports note that incidents were majorly related to COVID-19-related medical products, including vaccines, medicines, COVID test kits, antibiotics, face masks and sanitizers.
“The circulation and use of these SF medical products violate the Right to Health and slows down the pace of providing quality health services that people deserve. It is high time for firm action to curb this menace. If preventive steps are taken now, we will be better positioned to deliver effective healthcare to patients,” Nakul Pasricha, President, ASPA, said.
So how do we actually stop these products from getting into the market? This is where technologies like traceability come in handy. Tracking products across the healthcare supply chain eliminates counterfeit healthcare products, increases patient safety and complies with regulations.
Gs1 approach to healthcare traceability is focused on the use of open standards to provide visibility of objects that are relevant to supply chains.
‘’Traceability in healthcare enables you to see the movement of prescription drugs or medical devices across the supply chain. You can trace back to identify the history of the transfers and locations of a product, from the point of manufacture onwards. And you can track forwards to see the intended route of the product towards the point of care.’’ the company says.
Using the Global Traceability Standard for Healthcare (GTSH), countries are able to identify parties, items and events, label and tag traceable healthcare products, and retrieve or search for information (This includes tracking and tracing a traceable item from creation to the point of sale (POS), dispensing, use or destruction, e.g. using EPCIS) among other things.
GS1 uses EPCIS, the company’s standard for capturing and communicating data about the movement and status of products, logistics units and other assets in the supply chain. It enables trading partners to capture event information about objects as they move through the supply chain, and to share this information with authorized trading partners. EPCIS defines technical standards for a data-sharing interface between applications that capture event information, and applications that need access to such information.
EPCIS according to GS1 makes it possible for healthcare trading partners to satisfy regulatory requirements for Chain of Custody and Chain of Ownership, while at the same time leveraging the resulting supply chain visibility to improve operational efficiency and increase supply chain security.
Bottom line, as the healthcare supply chain becomes more complex and more global in scope, the importance of traceability is now greater than ever.