Some of the most widely circulated medicines in the Indian market will now sport a quick response (QR) code on their packet.
According to a government order, the top 300 most used drugs, including the likes of Dolo, Augmentin and Allegra, will have to mandatorily carry the QR code from August 1 — which will hit pharmacies over the next few weeks — as part of the Centre’s ‘track and trace’ mechanism to check the sale of counterfeit and spurious medicines, and ensure quality, sources said.
On scanning the QR code, a person can get all essential information regarding the drug such as manufacturing licence and batch number that will facilitate the medicine’s authentication.
The health ministry in March had asked the department of pharmaceuticals (DoP) to shortlist drug brands that can be included for implementation of mandatory QR codes.
Later in June, the ministry issued a draft notification for the same which stated, “The manufacturers of drug formulation products as specified in Schedule H2 shall print or affix Bar Code or Quick Response Code on its primary packaging label or, in case of inadequate space in primary package label, on the secondary package label that store data or information legible with a software application to facilitate authentication.”
Though first envisaged a decade ago, the concept was hanging fire because the domestic retail pharma industry was ill-prepared for the switch, and lacked the requisite software and technology systems which posed a big challenge.
However, industry sources believe because of this additional printing, the cost of the medicines will go up by 5 to 7 per cent and there may be a delay in the preparation of the batch.
What is a QR code?
A Quick Response (QR) code is a square-shaped black and white matrix of pixels that stores vital information about a product. The code is scannable by a smartphone (most have inbuilt scanners), to instantly decipher the salient points about a specific product on which the QR code is imprinted. In simple terms, it is an electronic storage form, like a miniature web browser, that details out the specificities of a product that a company wants to inform to its consumers.
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