Nov. 15, 2006
NOTE: Due to the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday, there will be
no
newsletters next week.
Editor’s Note
Taking RFID to the Pilot
The ability to track drugs at the case or item level has the potential
to be a boon to the pharmaceutical industry, proving invaluable in the
ongoing battle against counterfeit drugs. To that end, several pharma
vendors and distributors recently announced that they are implementing
or expanding pilot RFID programs.
Pfizer, having tagged more than 2 million bottles of Viagra in the past
year, has announced plans to begin tagging another of its top-selling
drugs. Next year, the drug manufacturer will affix UHF Gen 2 RFID tags
to all cases and pallets of Celebrex. Four assembly lines will be
utilized to produce and package the pain reliever and anti-inflammatory,
operating at four times the speed of a Viagra line.
Drug distributor AmerisourceBergen has its own pilot planned at its
Sacramento distribution center: tracking RFID-tagged bottles containing
bulk quantities of pills and tagged cases filled with multiple tagged
bottles. Located in California, the Sacramento DC is subject to the
SB 1476 drug-pedigree law, and the company intends to expand the RFID
system to its other two California DCs before the law's 2008 deadline.
VeriSign will provide integration services and querying capability for
the pilot, which will incorporate IBM software and middleware, as well
as an EPCIS data system. AmerisourceBergen will use a variety of handheld
and fixed RFID interrogators to read cases entering the DC, enabling
its manufacturing and retailing business partners to query and share
RFID data across multiple EPCIS systems.
Rite Aid has been testing case-level tracking of Viagra supplied by
McKesson since July. Now, the drug-store chain plans to expand its
RFID initiative to include item-level tagging, by reading tagged bottles
of Viagra received at its DC in Perryman, Md. With item-level tagging
capability, the chain will be able to count bottles automatically inside
the cases, then compare those counts with data from McKesson.
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Top News
Pfizer to Tag Celebrex
The drugmaker will
use Gen 2 RFID technology to track cases and pallets, and to test the
concept of case-level serialization and authentication. This could help
wholesalers catch counterfeit drugs.
Full Story >
AmerisourceBergen to Conduct HF/UHF RFID
Pilot
The pharmaceutical distributor is installing an
EPCIS-based system to track tagged bottles and cases of drugs passing
through one of its DCs. Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline will be among the
participating drugmakers.
Full Story >
Rite Aid Embarks on Item-Level Tracking Pilot
The drug-store chain will begin reading tagged bottles of Viagra received
at its DC in Perryman, Md., and plans to equip two stores with handheld
RFID readers so pharmacists can track incoming tagged bottles.
Full Story >
RFID Vendors Launch Item-Level RFID Drug-Tracking
Systems
One system reads EPC Gen 2 UHF tags on items, while
the other reads both HF tags on items and UHF tags on cases.
Full Story >
Certicom and TI Announce Data Security for HF
Tags
A system developed by the two companies uses
public-key elliptic-curve cryptography (ECC) to encrypt a drug's National
Drug Code (NDC). Supply-chain partners can read the encrypted tags to
authenticate that the goods are genuine.
Full Story >
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