Coding and traceability of pharmaceutical products

Below you will find the most relevant information about coding and traceability systems for pharmaceutical products, as well as the types of traceability, their advantages and the coding solutions offered by Sivart for any type of sector.

What is traceability of pharmaceutical products?

Traceability of pharmaceutical products is a set of actions, measures and technical procedures that allow the collection of information that allows the identification and registration of, among other things, the origin, composition, distribution and destination of pharmaceutical products.

It is a very useful system for tracking the production chain through software and allows manufacturers to penetrate specific markets that require this type of information.

For example, traceability systems are an indispensable and mandatory requirement in the marketing of products in the European Union, which requires the control and traceability of production in industries such as pharmaceuticals in order to preserve the safety of the end consumer.

Specifically in the pharmaceutical industry, traceability is a very efficient tool to guarantee the quality of the batches of marketed products, as well as compliance with the standards of labeling, identification, packaging, production and composition of drugs.There are three types of traceability of pharmaceutical products, differentiated according to the moment in the distribution chain in which the drug is found. All of them are essential to ensure full traceability:

Bottom-up traceability: it has to do with knowing in depth and detail the origin of raw materials, chemical components and minerals used in the production of pharmaceutical products such as drugs and medicines. Therefore, it is a very rigorous system that requires knowing the origin not only of the drug, but also of the processes prior to its production.
Downstream traceability: requires exhaustive monitoring of the distribution and marketing of pharmaceutical products. The coding system is particularly relevant in this traceability process.
Traceability of processes: it deals with knowing all the information related to the industrial production of pharmaceutical products; that is, how they are treated and what processes are carried out for the production of the final drug or pharmaceutical product.

Advantages of traceability in the pharmaceutical sector

As mentioned above, the traceability process for pharmaceutical products is focused on ensuring the quality of the drugs. That is, to ensure that the active ingredients they contain meet the stipulated levels and to identify possible contaminating or counterfeit components that could endanger the health of consumers.

Therefore, the traceability of pharmaceutical products has several benefits for all the agents involved in drug and medicine transactions, from laboratories, producers, distributors, pharmacists and end consumers.

Below we present the main advantages of traceability in the pharma sector for the different agents involved in its commercialization:

It facilitates and speeds up product identification by pharmacists, as there is no need to cut out the drug coupon. Each electronic dispensing has a double validation process and can be printed without attaching seals.
A more exhaustive control is available, since the option of dispensing pharmaceutical products without a prescription is made impossible.
The pharmacy or pharmacist is the sole owner of the information; all that is not part of the Data Protection Law can be commercialized. In addition, there will be business on the evolution of marketed sales and product launches, which will represent a good source of income for pharmacies.
Any error or anomaly in dispensing is recorded in the systems, so there is stricter control, making payment and billing much more efficient and immediate.
It is easier to compensate laboratories in notified prices or deductions.

Importance of the coding of pharmaceutical products

Traceability cannot be understood without other actions and processes to identify and code pharmaceutical products. The most important of these is the coding process. The most commonly used marking systems to identify pharmaceuticals and other products are barcoding, RFID, alphanumeric marking and coding.

Coding is understood as the process of converting specific information into a series of symbols, letters, numbers and other characters. The objective of this system is the unitary identification of each product, drug or medicine produced in the pharmaceutical industry.

Marking, labeling and machine vision for the pharmaceutical industry

At Sivart we have the most innovative technological systems for the correct marking, identification and reading of the market for pharmaceutical products.

Contact us without obligation and the Sivart team will advise you to offer you the best solution for your company in the pharma sector.