Dr. Sunil Gairola, Executive Director of the Serum Institute of India discusses how the Serum Institute of India is using GS1 standards to ensure the traceability and authenticity of COVID-19 vaccines. The implementation of these standards has allowed for greater transparency in the supply chain, improved vaccine quality control, and increased patient safety.

With more than 700 products – many in small packaging – Fresenius Kabi had to find appropriate labelling protocols to accommodate a globally unique product code, batch/lot number, and expiration date.

Fresenius Kabi decided to utilise the GS1 DataMatrix a two-dimensional barcode able to carry the most crucial drug information in a small footprint that can be machine-read at any angle. It also allows Fresenius Kabi to embed a GS1 Global Trade Item Number® (GTIN®, which contains the US FDA National Drug Code), a lot number, and expiration date – information that is needed to identify drugs efficiently and accurately in today’s digital environment.

Staff at Cruz Verde have joined with those at GS1 Colombia to design and implement a model for product identification, with automatic and efficient information capture and transmission.

Cruz Verde offers a range of pharmaceutical services in Colombia, including wholesale distribution of medicines and other supplies to hospitals. Dosed medication delivered by the company has a lot number and expiration date, but it is coded in a non-standard way. This means that hospital staff receiving the drugs need to manually verify each medication and it takes up to eight hours with an error rate of 1.5%.

Retailer MC has seen a 50% reduction in time spent receiving a case of products at its warehouse, and a 99% reduction in labelling errors, since introducing a labelling solution on cases and pallets based on GS1 standards.

The particularities of the OTC supply chain regarding product identification, unit of purchase, supplier’s technological maturity and constitution of logistic units such as pallets, lead to great inefficiencies and high levels of operational errors and rejection of orders.

Galderma has implemented a single traceability system for its dermatology drugs and medical products, based on GS1 standards and increasing safety and efficiency.

The supervision of medical cosmetic products is quite difficult in China, and there are problems with unlicensed and smuggled products in the market.

Current traceability system standards are not unified, various coding standards coexist and each traceability system is incompatible with the others. As a leading dermatology product enterprise, Galderma has three major groups of downstream distributors using various data exchange methods. Some small distributors have no IT system at all.