RFID pilot goes commercial
Aegate Ltd’s anti-counterfeiting
radio-frequency identification pilot for medicines is to be developed into a commercial system (PJ,
19 March, p330).
PA Consulting, Aegate’s parent company, is to invest £15m
over the next 30 months to bring its scheme — authentication at
the point of dispensing — to market.
Aegate’s system reads RFID (radio-frequency identification) tags
attached to individual medicine packs. It then matches the tag identification
with a central database of product information provided by manufacturers
and displays the result. This confirms the identity of the product and
provides any other information the maker has provided, including expiry
dates and safety warnings. Aegate has been in discussions with pharmacy
IT system suppliers with a view to integrating its technology with dispensary
systems.
Ian Shepherd, a pharmacist IT consultant, said: “It’s a brilliant
idea, but it is a solution looking for a problem. So long as it is 100
per cent accurate it will be worthwhile, but that is the bit that worries
me. Who is going to ensure that the [product and database record] matching
is 100 per cent accurate?” |
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