Developing a drug takes an average of 12 years and costs around a billion dollars. Protecting your product from being copied is important, not only in terms of cost but also patient safety.
The new EU regulation on e-verification of prescription medicine entered into force on 9 February. The regulation will make it impossible to spread falsified medicine in the distribution chain and ensure that pharmaceutical packaging contains the substances it is supposed to.
The regulation is applicable in all EU countries and the marking (code) on the drug will contain information about the product code, batch number, expiry date and a serial number unique to the specific package. When the products are marked with the new codes, these must be reported to a joint EU hub.
The pharmaceutical companies in the production stage estimate that the EU requirements for 2D marking and tamper-evident closure of pharmaceutical packaging will cost SEK 400 million.
Source: lakemedelsvarlden.se