If you’ve ever noticed the tiny serial numbers on any of your medication, you’re witnessing a direct manifestation of track and trace serialisation. Pharmaceutical serialisation is a complicated process that requires a great deal of cooperation from many facets of business. Read here to find out more about how pharmaceutical serialisation works.
What is pharmaceutical serialisation?
Pharmaceutical serialisation utilizes coded numbers on medical packaging designs in order to effectively track medicine as they go down the pharmaceutical supply chain.

How does serialisation pharma work?
Generally speaking, pharmaceutical track and trace serialisation tracks medication from manufacturer to each point of delivery, and is scanned at each place. This is done so when a pharmacist scans a medication’s serial number, they will be able to see each place the medication was as it went down the supply chain. This ensures that the medicine disseminated to customers isn’t counterfeit and hasn’t been tampered with it.

Why is pharmaceutical track and trace serialisation so important?
In America and the world at large, we are faced with one of the biggest pharmaceutical counterfeit issues of all time. This is due largely to the internet, and with the proliferation of online pharmacies, more counterfeit sites are able to sell unsuspecting buyers fake medicine. The counterfeit medicine can range from anything to placebo pills to straight up rat poison. Needless to say, this is bad for both the economy and for those who need to take medicine to regulate a healthy lifestyle.

What’s next for serialisation?
While track and trace serialisation is sound in theory, it is a lot more difficult to practice. This is mostly because proper track and trace requires uniform methodology across the nation — perhaps even across the globe. For upwards of two years, the government has been working hard to make the system of serialisation uniform. As these efforts increase, the chance of counterfeit drugs disseminating throughout the world will lessen.