Alf Goebel, Advanco

The issue of counterfeit medicines is one that continues to blight the global pharmaceutical landscape. Despite the innovative breakthroughs made by individual drug manufacturers, and the giant advances made by the sector collectively, the damage caused by counterfeiters continues to cast a shadow—one which is killing innocent people. 

The problem is a real one. In addition to triggering a rising number of deaths, plus causing life-changing injuries to many more, counterfeit medicines threaten the very integrity of the biopharma sector. And let’s not lose sight, too, of the fact that it continues to bite into the profits of companies who are having to work harder than ever to combat these ongoing threats. This issue affects us all. All of us working for the pharma industry specifically, and the life sciences industry more broadly, are on the frontlines when it comes to the battle against the forgers. We all have a role to play in ensuring that pharma packaging is watertight when it comes to security—both literally and figuratively. Let’s examine the issue in some depth, and look at the latest trends in the fight against counterfeit medicines. 

Recent figures from the Pharmaceutical Security Institute show that the number of counterfeit medicines is on the rise.

The data reveals that nearly 6,000 pharmaceutical crime incidents were recorded in 2021, up 38% from the year before and are at the highest amount since records began 20 years ago.

The greatest number was recorded in North America (2,442) followed by the Asia Pacific (1,747), Latin America (770), the Near East (705), Eurasia (646), Europe (374), and Africa (187). This order is largely due to how well countries in these regions are effectively identifying pharmaceutical crime through law enforcement activity and inspections by drug regulatory agencies. 

According to the World Health Organization, roughly 10% of medical products circulating in low- and middle-income countries are substandard or falsified.

 In sub-Saharan African nations, notes the United Nations (UN), this share is believed to be even higher, rising closer to 19-50%.

However, the actual number of incidents of fake drugs being manufactured and distributed is likely far higher, considering the many cases where counterfeits have not been detected or reported. 

Indeed, nearly half a million people are estimated to be killed by counterfeit medicines in sub-Saharan Africa every year, which was also noted by UN data.

 Of these, 267,000 deaths are believed to be linked to falsified or substandard antimalarial medicines, while a further 169,271 are connected to falsified or substandard antibiotics for severe pneumonia in children.

Why are medicines so attractive to forgers?

There are many reasons why criminals are looking at fake medicines as a way of illegally earning money. 

One reason is the rise in online pharmacies. Unlike a physical store, drugs brought via the internet provide no physical shop to return to, and nowhere for disgruntled consumers to take the matter further. It is much easier for perpetrators to lurk undetected in cyberspace, sending out their dangerous products from an unidentified location. 

To be clear, this is not a criticism toward regulated, legal online pharmacies. They provide a valuable service for many people and are now established as part of the fabric of the healthcare system in many geographies. However, the modus operandi does provide criminals with the means to distribute their goods in a manner that means they are much less likely to be traced.

It is also incredibly hard to spot forgeries. The only real way to know if a drug is counterfeit is through chemical analysis done in a laboratory. Sometimes, counterfeit drugs differ in size, shape, or color, or are sold in poor-quality packaging, but they often appear identical to the real product, which makes them especially dangerous. 

Most people will not have a laboratory in their home that can be used to analyze medicines. However, if in doubt about the authenticity of medicine, there are some clues to look out for. Interpol provides the following useful checklist, one that we strongly believe people should be made much more aware of.

The medicine contains too much, too little, or any different ingredients.

Claims to have different properties or side-effects.

Has a different shape, size, taste, or color.

Is not correctly labeled or not labeled at all.

Has an out-of-date or missing expiry date.

Does not contain information on how to store the drug.

The packaging looks poorly constructed or appears to have been interfered with.

There are spelling or grammatical errors on the packaging or instructions. 

However, while it is important to make people aware of how they can spot forgery, the pharma sector also has a duty to ensure it is doing all it can to proactively act against the forgers. 

One of the main elements to controlling the number of forged drugs in the world is regulation. More countries are realizing the importance of regulating their pharmaceutical production process, and much like a snowball effect, momentum is gathering. After the EU Falsified Medicines Directive (FMD) went into effect in February 2019 and the US introduced legislation in November 2017 as part of the Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA), it’s concluded that more than 75% of global medicines were covered by some form of track-and-trace regulations by 2019. 

The growth of serialization continues. For example, traceability legislation has recently been mandated in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) to combat the growing problem of counterfeit medicines. If MENA-based pharmaceutical companies fail to achieve compliance, they face being fined or even getting barred from product launches, which could potentially lead to significant business and financial implications.

Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) is something that most pharmaceutical manufacturers are committed to in a world that today knows much more about the damage that the collective industry has done to the world over many years. In addition to protecting the environment generally, ESG can also provide enormous benefits when it comes to the specific battle against forged medicines.

One critically important piece of legislation is the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development,

 adopted by all UN member states in 2015. It provides a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future. At its heart are the 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs), which are an urgent call for action by all countries developed and developing in a global partnership. They recognize that ending poverty and other deprivations must go together with strategies that improve health and education, reduce inequality, and spur economic growth, while tackling climate change and working to preserve our oceans and forests.

All drug manufacturers should be familiar with the SDGs and should be doing all they can to carry them out. It is our collective duty and one that should not be ignored. 

As an example, track-and-trace systems can help companies meet SDG No. 3: Good health and wellbeing. These tools can potentially achieve this by allowing access to genuine, safe, quality, and affordable medicines and vaccines for everyone. 

There is now a move toward local production and sourcing through the repatriation of supply chains into Europe and the US. This repatriation is a big deal for the future of the pharma sector. It signals confidence in the capabilities of Europe and the US, resulting in ongoing investment. This will result in job creation and a renewed interest in Europe and the US as a global center to produce essential pharmaceuticals. 

Added to the current shift toward a much more agile, local supply chain are the benefits resulting from digitalization. The rapid uptake of digital barcode scanning systems, combined with the very latest technology, has made supply chains increasingly secure, giving fraudsters a much smaller window of opportunity to ply their dangerous trade. 

The reality is that forged medicines will always be produced somewhere in the world. However, there is a formula which, although not a magic one, will go a long way to limiting the impact of this criminal activity. 

Regulation is key to this formula. Indeed, a blend of track-and-trace regulation, along with ESG regulation, will enable the pharmaceutical sector to launch a huge fight back. In addition, localizing the supply chain and the endless possibilities offered by new technologies, will create a powerful defense in the ongoing battle against fake medicines. 

Those who produce counterfeit drugs are directly impacting the lives millions of people. As a sector, we have a duty to combine our resources and knowledge to help protect patients. It won’t happen overnight—but by working together, we can help turn the tide. 

1. Fleck, A. Counterfeit Drugs on the Rise Globally. Statista. May 24, 2023.


https://www.statista.com/chart/30067/worldwide-counterfeit-pharmaceuticals-incidents/#:~:text=Counterfeit%20medicines%20are%20
on%20the,records%20began%2020%20years%20ago

2. 1 in 10 Medical Products in Developing Countries is Substandard or
Falsified. World Health Organization. November 28, 2017. 

https://www.who.int/news/item/28-11-2017-1-in-10-medical-products-in-developing-countries-is-substandard-or-falsified

3. Fake Medicines Kill Almost 500,000 Sub-Saharan Africans a Year:
UNODC Report. United Nations. February 1, 2023. 

https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/02/1133062

4. Fake Medicines Can be Counterfeit, Contaminated, or Mislabeled.
Don’t Take the Chance. Interpol. 

https://www.interpol.int/en/Crimes/Illicit-goods/Shop-safely/Fake-medicines

5. Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. United Nations. 

Articles

Questions and considerations for pharmaceutical companies in designing and
executing strategies to curb the incidence of fake drugs. 

Counterfeit Meds: Fighting the Forgers

As we are all aware, the pharmaceutical sector does not stand still. In fact, it is characterized by multiple “blink-and-miss-it” moments, whereby changes in its entire infrastructure seem to be taking place daily.

Never has this been more apparent than during the global COVID-19 pandemic. With major changes taking place in the supply chain to huge advancements in technology, the last 24 months have seen a seismic shift in the way that the pharma sector has had to adapt to the most intense pressure it has seen for generations.

The stark fact is that as technology becomes ever-more critical to our sector, especially with Industry 4.0 in motion; we will need to look at the very structure of how this technology is powered. This is where the importance of “new-edge technology” comes in.

Indeed, the advent of new-edge technology is set to rewrite the operations manual when it comes to critical warehouse operations. If any pharma company generally, or track-and-trace company specifically, fails to understand this, they will get left far behind those firms that embrace the opportunities that new-edge technology will bring.

Before focusing on the impact that new-edge technology will have, it is important to understand the huge, overall impact that technology will have on the entire pharma sector.

While Industry 4.0 has been called the fourth industrial revolution, its implementation will more likely resemble an evolution in which digitalization and automation meet very complex product portfolios and life cycles. Industry 4.0 will revolutionize the way the pharma sector works. Once only possible for international blue-chip corporations, robotics will become much more affordable and available to organizations of every size. From picking products at a warehouse to getting them ready to ship, autonomous robots can quickly and safely support manufacturers. Likewise, we will see distribution centers that will use autonomous cranes and trucks to streamline operations as they accept shipping containers from the ships.

A combination of cyber-physical systems, the Internet of Things, and the Internet of Systems, will power Industry 4.0 and allow the smart factory to become a reality. As a result of the support of smart machines that keep getting smarter as they get access to more data, the global pharma sector will become more efficient and productive, and less wasteful.

The problem with legacy computing systems

The traditional business computing set-up is built on a centralized data center. However, the global pandemic vaccine rollout has magnified the fact that the everyday internet isn’t well suited to moving endlessly growing rivers of real-world pharmaceutical track-and-trace data. Indeed, the ever-present threats resulting from bandwidth limitations, latency issues, 

and unpredictable network disruptions have threatened to cause major operational issues to those tasked with ensuring a watertight vaccine rollout to all four corners of the globe.

The prospect of moving so much data in situations that can often be time- or disruption-sensitive puts incredible strain on the global internet, which itself is often subject to congestion and disruption.

Edge computing is a distributed IT architecture in which client data is processed at the periphery of the network, as close to the originating source as possible.

It shifts the focus from the central data center to the logical edge of the infrastructure—taking storage and computing resources from the data center and moving those resources to the point where the data is generated.

The principle is straightforward: If you can’t get the data closer to the data center, get the data center closer to the data.

Processing often involves normalizing and analyzing the data stream to look for business intelligence, and only the results of the analysis are sent back to the principal data center.

The impact of this new-edge technology on the pharma track-and-trace sector will be huge, especially where overall supply chain operations are concerned. We have seen a move toward a much more agile, local supply chain. The rapid uptake of digital barcode scanning systems combined with the very latest technology, has made supply chains much more secure.

New-edge computing will tighten this up even further. It will power automatic, time-sensitive supply chain processes in warehouses, factories, and manufacturing facilities. These processes will lessen the need for human management and create optimal outcomes while eliminating the risk of error due to manual processes.

Furthermore, new-edge technology will sit behind the rise of smart robots that are poised to transform warehouse operations even further. Indeed, Gartner predicts that 75% of large enterprises will have adopted some form of smart robots in their warehouse operations by 2026 as they search for flexible automation.

Pharma companies will soon realize they will need to invest in new-edge technology. In part, this will result from the difficulties they are already facing, magnified by problems they will continue to face long into the future.

They are already enduring problems with finding an appropriately skilled workforce, and those who are already working within it are demanding ever-increasing salaries. There are also the effects resulting from the ongoing, residual impact of COVID.

These factors are enough to compel most companies to invest in cyber-physical systems, especially intralogistics and smart robots. New-edge technology allows higher automation and will vastly reduce the need for human interaction within the warehouse environment.

One way that edge computing will drive the process will see the addition of a scanner with a mobile application supporting the handling of serialized products across the supply chain and within warehouse operations. It will run on commercially available devices deployed at the warehouse, packaging, and other operational facilities.

The product will provide complete visibility across the global supply chain. This, combined with the ability to connect with multiple Enterprise-Level (Level 4) serialization repositories, Warehouse Management Systems (WMS), and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solutions, will complement the valuable investments made within existing solutions.

The outcome resulting from such changes will encourage a much higher compliance rate, and increased automation within the overall track-and-trace processes inside the warehouse.

New-edge technology will sit behind a significant change in how the pharma track-and-trace sector is structured. It will drive a much more automated process, which is already emerging due to Industry 4.0, and will result in the warehouse environment needing a much-reduced human workforce. Indeed, this combination of new-edge computing and Industry 4.0 will give the pharma sector an opportunity to revolutionize the way it works. The ability for individual companies to cooperate and complement each other in real time will enable giant strides to be made for the overall efficiency of the sector.

All individual components of the pharma industry, be it medicine producers, track-and-trace specialists, or logistics providers, need to look now at what they need to do to prepare for the changes ahead. Large components of it are already here and have been adopted by many organizations without realizing it. A much bigger and more proactive push will enable a smooth transition for other aspects—and will allow for a much tighter, coordinated pharma manufacturing sector, which will benefit us all.

Examining the impact of 'new-edge technology'—and Industry 4.0—on pharma    track-and-trace warehouse operations

On the (New) Edge of Tomorrow

Without a doubt, Covid-19 has shone a spotlight on the vulnerability of the world in the face of a serious pandemic. On a human front, it has caused millions of deaths and has left people with life-changing disabilities and ongoing health problems. And, well-documented, on an economic front, the crisis has cost the globe billions of dollars and has left people jobless and struggling to make ends meet.

Against such a grim backdrop, governments across the world realized they had to act swiftly to ensure a vaccine was created, produced, and rolled out as efficiently as possible. This was a necessary act to ensure the global population felt as safe and reassured as possible in the face of an increasing death rate and ever-climbing hospitalization figures.

Most consider the creation and rollout of the Covid vaccines a remarkable feat. When you consider the number of years that other vaccines have spent in development before being issued, the fact that already-large proportions of the world are now receiving their Covid booster jabs is a testament to what the human spirit can achieve when push comes to shove.

However, the vaccine rollout has not been without its problems. Parts of the world are still lagging far behind when it comes to receiving the vaccine, and global supply chains have had to adapt and amend major processes to cope.

As we are now firmly into the deployment of booster vaccines for the coronavirus, it is worth analyzing the lessons that have been learned across the US pharmaceutical supply chain—and to see what changes have been applied to ensure the booster rollout continues to be done quickly and efficiently.

The FDA recently announced a shortening of the interval between the primary series of Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine and a booster dose to five months, as it looks to bolster protection against the fast-spreading Omicron variant. The belief is the shorter interval time, reduced from six months for people aged 18 and above, will provide better protection sooner against the variant, which is driving up infections and overwhelming hospitals.

Already cleared for adults, the FDA earlier this month also authorized the use of a third dose of the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine for adults and children ages 12 to 15, and narrowed the interval for booster shot eligibility to five months from six. The agency also authorized a third shot for children aged 5 through 11 years who are immunocompromised. A single booster of the J&J vaccine was cleared last fall as well for use in adults.

It goes without saying that first-and-second dose vaccine and booster distribution will continue to be a mammoth undertaking—and one which, just a year ago, placed the entire US pharmaceutical sector under extreme pressure to meet.

One of the overriding reasons for the global vulnerability seen over the past 18 months is a basic one. Most industries, governments and countries were simply not prepared for such a devastating pandemic that appeared seemingly out of nowhere. The world was placed into lockdown to limit the virus’s spread, but this led to major logistical issues. Problems with sourcing the quality and quantity of supplies needed, and ongoing problems with getting them distributed across the globe, are still being experienced now.

This has led to a green light from vaccine and drug counterfeiters, ever ready to chance their luck and make a quick profit from the misery of others, people desperate to protect themselves against the virus.

Therefore, what lessons have been learned? And have they been put into practice across the US supply chain?

The continued repatriation of supply chains

One of the major issues highlighted by the pandemic was the fact the globe had become overly reliant on just one geography—namely China—for the supply of medication and medical equipment. Not only did this cause a damaging bottleneck, placing an inordinate amount of stress on the rigid supply chains connected with Chinese production, it placed an unrealistic demand on resources.

Fast-forward to today and while there is a still an overwhelming reliance on geographies such as China for the supply of much of the world’s medicine, the Covid pandemic has seen this pattern starting to shift.

We are now seeing a move toward local production and sourcing through the repatriation of supply chains into the US. This repatriation is a big deal for the future of the pharmaceutical sector. It signals confidence in the capabilities of the US, resulting in ongoing investment. This should mean an increase in job creation and a renewed interest in the brand name of the US as a global center to produce essential pharmaceuticals.

Track-and-trace cooperation powered by Pharma 4.0

The advent of the virus has highlighted the importance for product track and trace to work together, resulting in a supply chain which will minimize costs for pharma companies and lead toward a new standard of openness and cooperation in the Pharma 4.0 era.

Indeed, we are already seeing the implementation of agile supply chain regulation that will require a strong industry-standard open interface and interoperability. To do this, the hardware and the software among different vendors needs to be much more aligned and should work more closely together, resulting in more open and cooperative serialization processes. Machines need to speak to each other in a common language, regardless of the manufacturer.

The importance of this cannot be overstated. The ability to track every single product, at every single stage of the process from source to supply to consumer, is essential.

Industry 4.0 will revolutionize the way the biopharma sector works. Any US-based industry player that doesn’t start preparing for it now will be left languishing far behind.

Once only possible for international blue-chip corporations, robotics will become much more affordable and available to organizations of every size. From picking products at a warehouse to getting them ready to ship, autonomous robots can quickly and safely support manufacturers. Likewise, we will see distribution centers that will use autonomous cranes and trucks to streamline operations as they accept and process shipping containers.

Since connected machines collect a tremendous volume of data that can inform maintenance, performance and other issues, as well as analyze that data to identify patterns and insights that would be impossible for a human to do in a reasonable timeframe, Industry 4.0 offers the opportunity for manufacturers to optimize their operations quickly and efficiently by identifying what needs attention.

The simple fact is that no one knows yet just how often Covid booster jabs will need to be administered. They could perhaps be a long-term solution. If so, Industry 4.0 needs to form the centerpiece of all future supply chain structures.

All firms involved in the US pharmaceutical track-and-trace space should treat environmental, social and governance (ESG) as a cornerstone of their business to collectively benefit the entire pharma supply chain and cold chain.

Support of global ESG initiatives is an important step forward to stamping out the issue of fake drugs, whether these are fake Covid vaccines or any other type of drug or piece of equipment.

The UN Charter on Sustainable Development is a clear example of moves that are being established to ensure a safer and more responsible world. Every company should be familiar with its contents and should be doing all they can to adhere to them to be prepared for potential future collective battles against global pandemics.

I do not want to take away from the fact that the pharmaceutical sector has achieved great things since the start of the pandemic. However, there is a lot of food for thought in terms of the changes that need to be made to ensure future Covid vaccine boosters—and future unrelated pandemics—can be handled more efficiently and smoothly.

The importance of ongoing streamlining cannot be emphasized more. Even now, as the Covid booster program has been in force for a few months, we are seeing no let-up in the need for its swift delivery and rollout.

For example, Meta Platforms Inc., the technology giant behind Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has said it requires Covid booster shots for employees to work on-site at its US campuses. The company has also stated it will delay fully opening of those offices until late March, yet another sign that the Omicron variant is shifting corporate reopening plans.

The global pharmaceutical sector is one that is constantly evolving—and the signs are clearly evident that it will need to keep evolving, perhaps at a faster rate than it has ever done before.

With the delivery of Covid-19 booster shots in full swing, how does this effort compare to the initial vaccine distribution—and is the pharma supply chain adapting accordingly?

Booster Rollout Lessons for Pharma

The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic has shone a spotlight onto the vulnerability of the world in the face of a serious pandemic. On a human front, it has caused hundreds of thousands of deaths and has left people with life-changing disabilities and ongoing health problems. On an economic front, it has cost the globe multiple billions of dollars and has left people jobless and struggling to make ends meet.

With Covid-19 cases continuing to flare-up in some parts of the world, one of the worst feelings is that we cannot even be sure that the worst is over yet, even though the situation is looking a lot more positive in some parts of the world, thanks to the rollout and delivery of vaccines. So, why did this “Covid-19”, a name that most of us had never even heard of just 18 months ago, have such a devastating effect, one which has touched every single one of us in one way or another?

One of the overriding reasons for the global vulnerability seen over the past 18 months is a basic one. Most industries, governments and countries were simply not prepared for such a devastating pandemic that appeared seemingly out of nowhere.

The world was placed into lockdown to limit the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, but this led to major logistical issues. Problems with sourcing the quality and quantity of supplies needed, and ongoing problems with getting them distributed across the globe, are still being experienced now.

This has led to a green light from the counterfeiters, ever ready to chance their luck and make a quick profit from the misery of others, people desperate to protect themselves against the virus. As recently as February, there were 3,000 fake vials of Covid vaccine seized in China, an operation resulting in the arrest of 80 people. With depressing predictability, I am confident this is just the tip of the iceberg, with further fake vaccines being produced across the world at this very moment in time.

Therefore, what should we—the serialization and track- and-trace sector specifically and the pharmaceutical sector more widely—do now to establish a blueprint for the future? While we might not be able to prevent another virus, or obliterate it, what can we do to ensure we are a much tighter, much more cohesive unit to do battle in the years ahead?

One of the major issues highlighted by the pandemic was the fact the world had become overly reliant on just one geography—namely China—for the supply of medication and medical equipment. Not only did this cause a damaging bottleneck, placing an inordinate amount of stress on the rigid supply chains connected with Chinese production, it placed an unrealistic demand on resources. While China is, of course, a major global pharmaceutical producer, even it was finding it tough to supply the rest of the planet through its established, rigid supply-chain.

Fast-forward to today, and while there is a still an overwhelming reliance on geographies such as China for the supply of much of the globe’s medication, the Covid pandemic has seen this pattern starting to shift.

We are now experiencing a move toward local production and sourcing through the repatriation of supply chains into Europe and the US. This repatriation is a big deal for the future of the pharmaceutical sector. It signals confidence in the capabilities of Europe, resulting in ongoing investment into the continent. This will result in job creation and a renewed interest in the brand name of Europe as a global center to produce essential pharmaceuticals.

This will be of major importance, should the world need to spring into action again in the face of another pandemic. An agile supply chain, local sourcing, local production and various centers of production will mean we are in a much better state than we were just 18 months ago.

The advent of the coronavirus has highlighted the importance for product track and trace to work together, resulting in a supply chain that will minimize costs for pharma companies.

Indeed, we are already seeing the implementation of agile supply-chain regulation, which will require a strong industry-standard open interface and interoperability. To do this, the hardware and the software among different vendors needs to be much more aligned and work much closer together.

The importance of this cannot be overstated. To be able to track every single item, at every single stage of the process, from source to supply to consumer, is essential. To have complete, watertight confidence that products are the bone fide official ones, is an important step.

If we do everything possible to work together and pool resources to nip this in the bud now, we will all be in a much better shape should we witness another global outbreak that requires global cooperation to conquer.

The past 18 months have ensured the pharmaceutical industry has collectively reevaluated the technology it needs, versus the technology that was in place.

The technology driving actual serialization processes was, as would be expected, of the latest generation and latest specifications. However, in line with almost every other business sector across the globe, pharmaceutical serialization companies have also had to invest in systems that are conducive to complementing what is likely to become the new working norm.

With client meetings, team catch-ups and even signing valuable business deals now reliant on advanced technology, the sector has experienced a quiet, behind-the-scenes digital revolution over the past year, one which will place it in strong stead for the future. This trend must continue at full steam—we cannot take our foot off the gas. Whether we are in the office or in our kitchen at home because of lockdown, the technology must exist for us to spring into action, wherever we are.

All firms within pharmaceutical track and trace should treat environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) as a cornerstone of their business to collectively benefit the entire supply chain.

Support of global ESG initiatives is an important step forward to stamping out the issue of fake drugs, whether these are fake Covid vaccines, or any other type of drug or piece of equipment.

The United Nations Sustainable Development Agenda, launched in 2015, is a clear example of moves that are being established to ensure a safer and more responsible world. All companies should be familiar with the contents of the charter and should be doing all they can to adhere to them for any future collective battle against a global pandemic.

It is quite feasible that another pandemic could rise again. We might not want to think about it right now, but it remains a possibility. The overriding message I want to present is that we need to exist in a semi-standby mode from hereon in. While it is important to put the mechanics in place, such as continuing to foster a much more open, local supply chain, and continuing to invest in the necessary technology, it is essential we are ready to spring into action at short notice, even in the face of strict lockdowns and global shutdowns.

If we must treat the current crisis as a dress rehearsal, then so be it. Being prepared is half of the battle, and we have a duty to ensure it’s one we are all ready to fight together.

How the pharma serialization and track-and-trace sector can be better prepared, should the world be unlucky enough to experience another global crisis