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RFID: Coming to a Pharmacy Near You |
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According to the New York Times, the FDA is teaming up with pharmacies and drug manufacturers to implement a voluntary RFID system, or radio tracking system using special barcodes--"barcodes that bark." As anyone who has worked in a retail pharmacy knows, your amber bottles are filled from larger bottles containing a few or possibly hundreds of pills. These can be put in machines that count pills automatically, but records are kept about expiration dates, batches, etc. in case of recalls or other contamination. Records for heavily regulated drugs (such as OxyContin in this project) can be subject to state and federal counts and forms each time one is dispensed or more. Putting RFID in pharmacies makes much more sense to me than the Wal-Mart inventory. Small bottles of expensive drugs--the first targeted in the project--are stolen, contaminated, and worst of all faked. This wouldn't pick up problems at hospital pharmacies, which change bulk packaging into sterile single-use packaging or buy it that way from the start. Still, tracking drugs is a problem in all pharmacies, and RFID sounds like a good start to me.
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