RFID offers quality of service enhancements for pharmaceutical industry

The use of radio frequency identification (RFID) has potentially both positive and negative consequences to patients in healthcare, says the CEO of the Toronto-based Ontario Pharmacists’ Association.Speaking in Toronto at a conference on health information privacy and security earlier this year, Marc Kealey discussed some of the benefits of RFID systems. They can carry information or allow links to a central database but, unlike barcodes can be read from a distance. "The management of the supply of medications is made more efficient through the use of RFID," Kealey tells Report on Wireless. "It offers protection for the manufacturers of medications and ensures that the product that travels from the manufacturing facility to the shelf and then to the home is real. The use of RFID will avoid dangers such as the use of counterfeit medication. It will provide a guarantee for patients that the medications are real."Last summer, a Hamilton ON pharmacist was charged with illegally dispensing counterfeit Norvasc, a medication used to treat hypertension and chronic stable angina. It was the first case in Canada of a pharmacist being charged with dispensing counterfeit medication – several have occurred in the US.Such cases erode the public’s confidence in the pharmacy profession, says Kealey. RFID offers a solution as a monitoring tool to ensure that the medication is legitimate and intended for a particular use."There is an obligation…that pharmacists make sure that patients are getting real medication," says Kealey. "We want to ensure that what is in the bottle is real medicine. In the Hamilton case, there was talcum powder mixed with baking soda, and no medicine at all. This incident caused a big black eye for pharmacy."Pharmacy as a sector of the economy has been slower to implement RFID compared to other retailers in North America: Wal-Mart has 600 of its top suppliers using RFID technology, and pilot projects involving the use of RFID technology in 20 Canadian-based Wal-Mart stores and a distribution centre in Ontario have been announced. "It’s basically used in retail outlets in the US and Canada right now to manage supply," says Kealey. "It is in its infancy stages in surveillance in counterfeit drugs or for patient compliance, but it is on our radar screen."Kealey says that the Ontario Pharmacists’ Association is working closely with the Canadian Association of Pharmacy Distribution Management to advance the use of RFID technology in pharmacy, which Kealey estimates to be two or three years away. The Ontario Drug Benefit program procures $3.5 billion worth of medications annually.Another possible use for RFID technology is to curb the growing practice of cross-border prescription drug importation from Canada by Americans, via foot traffic, Internet, and mail order. The practice saves Americans money by purchasing medications in Canada’s regulated drug market, contends Kealey."This is another nefarious activity going on, and the technology could stop that," he says.From a pharmacy practice point of view, the use of RFID can enhance patient compliance, explains Kealey. When a patient leaves a physician’s office with prescription in hand, RFID can track if the prescription is filled and then taken home."Physicians would receive a prompt that a prescription has been filled," says Kealey. "The physician can call the patient and encourage the patient to fill the prescription if it has not been."Kealey described a future scenario where it would be possible to implant an RFID chip in each pill in a vial to track if medication is being taken – a scenario which could present some disturbing privacy implications. Ontario’s Information and Privacy Commissioner Ann Cavoukian issued guidelines at the start of last summer on the use of RFID technology. The guidelines call for privacy and security measures to be built into the design of any RFID systems as well as a thorough privacy impact assessment. The guidelines say that technology design should minimize the "identifiability, observability and linkability" of RFID data, and that RFID data systems should be as open and transparent as possible. The Ontario Information and Privacy Commissioner worked in collaboration with EPCglobal Canada, an industry association involved in the development of electronic product identification, to develop the guidelines. Meanwhile, federal Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart has also expressed concerns about privacy and security in RFID systems and that, where possible, the systems aim for informed consent."There is the notion of big brother is watching," says Kealey. "We have to ensure that we leave no loose ends or holes. We have to know where that information lay resident and who is using it. We have to know who is the viewer and who is the user."But Don DiCesare, VP of customer supply-chain relationship at Toronto-based Parmalat Canada, a producer of dairy food products, and steering committee chair of the Canadian RFID Centre, says that RFID ensures products maintain integrity throughout the supply chain process. The Canadian RFID Centre is an education and demonstration centre for Canada’s retail, produce, and consumer products industries interested in using RFID. DiCesare described RFID as a technology in constant evolution with the goal being one standard for the technology in the long term. "It’s very similar to think of this as a license plate on your car," explains DiCesare. "If you are able to get hold of the Ministry of Transport records and knew a person’s license plate number, and could hack into the ministry’s computer system, you could find out a lot more information about someone, such as the name and address."RFID is no different," says DiCesare. "There is information on the data that you bought. What we have today on products is . The records are in a computer. Do people consider those private? I suppose they do."

RFID offers quality of service enhancements for pharmaceutical industry

News | March 12, 2007

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