Relying on manual processes for managing serialised medicines at an individual pack level is a labour intensive and time-consuming process that can disrupt normal operations. In this article, Sébastien Sliski outlines how digitally enabled inventory processes, such as aggregation and consolidation, can help pharmaceutical wholesalers and hospital pharmacies meet their FMD compliance requirements in the most efficient way, while also yielding higher efficiency gains.
SINCE FEBRUARY 2019, all actors in the pharmaceutical supply chain, including medicines manufacturers, distributors, wholesalers, pharmacies and hospitals, were expected to become compliant with the Falsified Medicines Directive (FMD). The Directive’s core objective is to increase the security of the manufacturing and delivery of medicines across Europe, protect patients and prevent falsified medicines from entering the supply chain.
For many of these organisations, FMD compliance has involved a significant re-engineering of their processes in order to receive, verify and decommission serialised medicines. For hospital pharmacies, a lack of a highly efficient workflow can potentially have a significant knock-on effect on a system that is under ever-increasing pressure.
