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Article Date: 07/02/2006
Article Title: RFID: The right prescription for Pfizer
We reported in the past about the development of RFID technology, its potential impact on logistics and supply chain management and the data protection and privacy issues related to RFID.
To recap, RFID or Radio Frequency Identification is a generic term for technologies that use radio waves to automatically identify people or objects. RFID tags have a number of uses but in the supply chain are attached to products to help locate them and therefore not only make inventories easier but act as proof the product is genuine and has not been tampered with.
On December 15 2005 Pfizer commissioned the first major project to fully explore the use of RFID technology in this way. The project involves fixing RFID tags to all U.S shipments of their drug Viagra in an effort to detect shipments of counterfeit pills which cost the company millions of dollars each year.
The technology operates by installing a microchip containing a unique serial code into each RFID tag. Pharmacists can then retrieve the codes using a special RFID reader and check on the Pfizer website to see if their code and therefore the product is genuine.
Pfizer has dismissed concerns about a possible invasion of privacy, stating that the RFID tags are not used to track or store any kind of patient information. Furthermore in the majority of cases the bottles patients take home will be generic amber pharmacists bottles, rather than the original Pfizer containers.
Pfizer has dedicated 5 million dollars to the project. It believes that its strategy will encourage many of its partners to adopt the technology themselves in line with the recommendations for the wider use of RFID in the Drugs industry made by the U.S Food and Drug Administration.
Angela Kindness
Solicitor
angelakindness@eversheds.com
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