A new development to be seen concerning pharmaceutical products

QR Codes: New Control on Pharmaceutical Produces

Highlights

• Benefits of introducing QR codes on pharmaceutical products.
• The reason behind its delay.
• About its global impact.
• Its impact on rural and urban Indian society.
• Problems that could be faced during or after its implementation

QR Code Implementation in 2011

It could be soon possible to witness QR codes on all pharmaceutical products. This idea is thought to guarantee legitimacy of all pharma products, as we know that pharma products are directly related to human health so it becomes more essential to check out its efficacy. Government of India has been in favor of establishing QR codes on pharma products since 2011 but things didn’t work out. There were many issues noted with many guidelines that were issued for the detection and staking by numerous divisions. There main wish was to get a single QR code structure to resolve all the worries regarding the security issues of pharma products.

Panel to Revamp the QR Implementation Procedure

It was recently claimed by the related people that soon QR codes will be seen on pharma products that could guarantee their authenticity. A panel is built up to revamp the procedure using which this was going to be established. Its task would be to understand the previous issues and then start deploying the solutions to the problems. It’s another main task would be to make general people receptive about this whole thing.

QR Code is a Solution

QR codes could be regarded as a revolutionary step taken for the betterment of the society as a whole. It could be very beneficial as it could help in tracking and tracing the actual source of the drug this could help by curtailing the opportunity of bogus and inadequate drugs reaching patients.

Members of Niti Aayog met the commerce ministry, Department of Pharmaceuticals and the health department last week and they had a discussion in favor of resolving the issue and publishing a notice soon.

The people working on this matter said that the report will be given with in next 21 days. This will be the report provided by the commission set up by the Health secretary himself. People linked with the pharma industry and the whole linked lobby seemed to be contented with the changes made in the procedure by which this was going to be introduced. They said that there was lot of misinterpretation and confusion before but finally everything is clear for them now.

How QR is useful?

This QR code will be very useful for everyone as this will have all information regarding the pharma product that is being used like if you will scan the code with the help of your simple smart phone you will have all information regarding that product like name of the API that is active pharmaceutical ingredient, brand name, name and address of the manufacturer, expiry date, batch number, batch size, manufacturing date, date of retesting, license number provided during manufacturing of the product, import license number, special storage place if that is essential, serial shipping container code. These are all those things that are kept to be mandatory for everyone to give information about. A draft was issued last year by India’s drug manager proposing that it will be compulsory to introduce the QR code on Active pharmaceutical ingredients.

This can be regarded as one of those extremely needed steps that could answer all those questions that might arise in the mind of common people while buying medicines. It could very easily ensure the safety of millions of Indian’s consuming medicines on regular basis. Hope more such steps would be taken to uplift the pharma sector of India as such steps can uplift the credibility of our country’s pharma industry in whole world.

Understanding QR Code

But having said all these things When we see QR codes role across the globe then our understanding for the QR code increases a bit more, it is not like we Indians are not familiar of QR codes but we have to agree that QR codes are not that much common in India and there is still a huge population that has not dealt with it as for now we in a way can say that we are not completely aware of this as a whole nation. QR codes in India for now has a very small history like using QR scan while doing digital payment is common in India nowadays but still it has not gained that much of momentum.

While talking about QR codes position in India let’s see what it has achieved in countries like U.S.A and Europe. In U.S.A and Europe it was available since middle of 2010 but it was unable to gain that much of reputation that it achieved in Japan and China the place it was originally generated from, the reason was discovered as bad implementation procedure. So the point needed to be made is that if we want to implement this with pharma products then we should definitely learn from the experience of superpower in order to make it successful in India as there are so many pros of using QR codes as we have discussed earlier but all those things could directly help the modern society of India or we can say the middle class people of India, the riches, but what about the normal people of India? who are still not aware of how to use smart phones. That is why we need to be much focused towards the implementation issues that would definitely arise in India as we know that India is still a developing country with 649,481 number of villages. Most of these villages are still deprived of the best internet connectivity. Government should think about feasibility of implement on grass root level as it is the question of medicines that must reach to every citizen of India at lowest price possible. The government of India wanted to implement QR code facility in order to determine the good pricing of the pharma products so that medicines could reach to the people of India according to the price set by the government but if it will have issues that can create more problems than solving it then we never know it can be in a same way failed in India as it was not successful in U.S.A. and Europe. When we go deeper then we realize that the issue is not just limited to the internet connective government needs to educate common people of India about the overall usage of internet in order to make India grow even more faster.

Hope that government will resolve all issues properly before its implementation so that the benefits could reach to the base.           

References

1. Material was provided by ET Healthworld.com originally written by Teena Thakkar.
2. https://heath.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/pharma/all-pharmaceutical-products-could-come-with-qr-codes-in-bid-to-ensure-authenticity/76990594
3. https://econsultancy.com/the-pros-and-cons-of-qr-codes/
4. https://www.thehindubuisnessline.com/economy/policy/soon-qr-codes-may-become-mendatory-on-drug-packs/article26343626.ece