Atlantic Zeiser calls on pharma industry to ramp up preparation for serialization

The realization of the European directive 2011/62/EU – Falsified Medicines Directive – took a major step forward with the delegated act being officially published in its final release on February 9. This means that pharmaceutical companies and vendors that sell their products within the European Union now have only three years to render their processes and workflows fully compliant and to provide products with the required safety features.

‘The ones who have not yet started to intensively get involved into the topic might run into shortness of time,’ emphasized Atlantic Zeiser CEO Manfred Minich. ‘From our experience from past projects, the majority of big international pharma companies know what needs to be done but they still haven’t implemented all relevant serialization workflows, especially on the enterprise level. However a multitude of smaller and medium-sized manufacturers and CMOs have been procrastinating on this issue for a long time.’

The main reason, among others, for this, Minich said, was the fact that the Falsified Medicines Directive was more than 30 pages long containing partly complex requirements whereas the technical implications were not always obvious. ‘Although the technologies that are necessary to generate, print and verify codes are usually common, the reliable interchange with a database solution that can administrate workflows and guarantee the uniqueness of the codes and safety features seems to be undiscovered territory for most players.’

Many projects that were initiated in the early stages were mainly focused on machinery and hardware, according to Atlantic Zeiser, with printing and verifying codes on secondary packaging, in most cases, limited to one single pilot line and data that was stored locally (so-called ISA95 Level 1 and 2). ‘Most companies will need to distribute and recollect serialization data from a multitude of lines on plant or enterprise level (ISA95 Level 3 and 4),’ said Minich. ‘At latest when it comes to data repository and forwarding of the data to national hubs this functionality will be required anyway. If the serialization software is not designed in a way to cope with these needs, a retrofit will for sure involve significant additional costs and delays. Most companies will not be able to afford that as time is short.’

Minich added that the situation is complicated furthered by the fact that the EU is not the only region that will be implementing measures to remove danger to patients posed by counterfeiters. Large markets like China have already implemented a law that requires serialization of each single product including full traceability over the entire logistics chain. Other countries like the USA will be among many others following very soon or have at least started to think about this.

‘The work that needs to be done to comply with the EU regulation should ideally also be of benefit for other regions in the world – even for regulations that are not known at the moment,’ said Minich.

Atlantic Zeiser offers the Medtracker software, a modular system designed for serialization and track and trace applications in the pharmaceutical sector. It allows the administration of multiple lines or sites at the same time.

Minich advocates the installation of such a central serialization software and database application that is characterized by a modular architecture in order to be able to grow with any need. This way it is possible to quickly adapt workflows and coding principles to new emerging regulations without the need of reprogramming and revalidation, outlined Atlantic Zeiser.

Read more about developments in the pharmaceutical market in L&L issue 5, 2015 here, and issue 5, 2014 here

More information on the Falsified Medicines Directive (2011/62/EU), and 2016/161, is available on the European Commission website