Pharmaceutical industry faces huge pressure to invest for traceability

There are 15,000 production lines of prescription medicines in Europe, of which only 30% currently have the capacity to implement serialization, or the traceability of the origins of prescription medicine packages.

During the next three years, the pharmaceutical industry will encounter a huge pressure to invest, as the European Commission adopted a regulation in October under which the serialization of prescription medicine packages will become mandatory in all EU countries in 2019.

“So far, pharmaceutical manufacturers have waited to see how the legislation will evolve. Soon, everyone will be rushing at the same time and only the most progressive ones will make it on time, because the delivery times of equipment suppliers are becoming longer,” says serialization expert, Iiro Jantunen from Servicepoint Oy in Finland.