US regulators the Food and Drug Administration have released guidance for the attachment of RFID tags to drug packaging in order to ensure “that the drugs available in the United States are among the safest in the world." “Radio Frequency Identification technology is an innovative response to the challenge of counterfeit drugs," said Health and Human Secretary Tommy G Thompson. The FDA, who also approved human-implantable RFID chips for medical reasons last month, say the move was taken in order to make sure that drugs are authentic and create an “electronic pedigree… from the point of manufacture to the point of dispensing." The plans refer to retail supplies of medication, and no plans to tag bottles that have been dispensed have been announced; however, a workgroup has been set up with a view to extending the technology to help manufacturers to conduct recalls or the FDA to investigate stolen stock. Flurries of pharmaceutical companies have already announced that they will be supporting the measures. Pfizer, for instance, have said that they will be installing RFID tags in retail cases of Viagra in the US by the end of the year, since it is such a commonly counterfeited drug. GlaxoSmithKline are also to incorporate RFID tags into several drugs; again starting off with retail packages only. “We absolutely agree with the FDA that an electronic product code will help fight counterfeit drugs. But this technology still requires development of industry-wide standards so that we can share information in a meaningful way," said David Pulman, president of global manufacturing and supply. “Today’s actions were designed with one goal in mind: to increase the safety of medications consumers receive by creating the capacity to track a drug from the manufacturer all the way to the pharmacy," said Dr Lester M Crawford, acting FDA commissioner. According to the New York Times, the tags will initially cost around 20 to 50 cents (10-25p) each, with readers costing thousands of dollars. Pfizer claims that they will not be making any initial cost savings by introducing tags to their stock. A spokesperson for the Medicine and Healthcare Regulation Agency (MHRA) told E-Health Insider that while they follow such developments with interest there are no current plans to introduce a similar scheme in the UK.
