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Cephalon Pharmaceuticals (Cephalon) is located in Pennsylvania and is famous for its anti-pain and tumor drugs. Cancer drug-fentanyl oral tablets (Fentora, mainly for the control of explosive pain in chronic pain in cancer patients).
In the past two years, Cephalon has carefully evaluated RFID technology and its application effects. The company hopes to use RFID technology to combat counterfeit and inferior drugs and improve the tracking management of exported pharmaceutical products. Cephalon also hopes that its downstream supply chain partners will carry out product labeling work and achieve effective tracking management-which is part of the drug electronic genealogical traceability goal. According to the plan, Cephalon will attach RFID tags to the boxes and trays of fentanyl oral tablets from this year.
Cephalon announced the RFID application plan as early as 2005, and carried out related tests on the identification of single products, boxes and pallets. Since the reading speed of Gen1 tags in single product applications is low, the focus of the application at that time was still on the tracking and identification of boxes and pallets. According to Randy Bradway, vice president of business at Cephalon, the single-product packaging of medicines contains metal materials, which makes it difficult to read labels effectively. Due to metal interference, “Gen 1 labels attached to the cargo box are also difficult to read. Case”.
Beginning in 2006, Cephalon began to test the performance of Gen 2 tags under the RFID system developed by ADT (ADT also provides EPC Gen 2 tag inlays), and found that Gen 2 tags have both effective reading rates and reading distances. There has been a substantial improvement. The test data clearly proves this point:
1. The reading rate of cargo boxes and pallets with Gen 1 tags passing through the entrance of the cargo channel is 9.7%;
2. After using Gen 2 tags, the reading rate rose to 93.2%.
3. The reading distance has also been increased from 12 feet (Gen 1) to 20 feet (Gen 2).
Based on the above performance improvement, Cephalon plans to carry out the application test of Gen 2 label on single product packaging, but there is no specific arrangement yet. Randy Bradway believes that this is a “gradual process.” At present, the Salt Lake City Pharmaceutical Factory has been equipped with UHF Gen 2 high-speed readers and antennas produced by Impinj. At the beginning of the test, Cephalon and middleware supplier OATSystems cooperated. However, Cephalon is also evaluating other middleware vendors to ensure optimal integration of RFID tag data with existing SAP enterprise resource planning software.
American Nosco Packaging Company integrates RFID tags into medicine bottle packaging to achieve anti-counterfeiting
Cephalon plans to install an automated label application system as soon as possible. The company believes that attaching RFID tags to the boxes and pallets of all fentanyl oral tablets will help supervise export commodities and achieve more effective tracking and management in the entire supply chain. Bradway said that as far as Cephalon’s supply chain partners (wholesalers and distributors) are concerned, not all partners need to immediately start the application of RFID at the container and pallet level. Only some manufacturers, especially some have passed the electronic genealogy law. Manufacturers in regions (such as California) need to implement RFID systems. At present, a group of drug distributors have tested and installed RFID reading devices, including McKesson and Cardinal Health. .
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