The Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) has asked the small pharma industries in the country to adopt bar coding by availing the subsidy scheme announced by the government as the Union health ministry may soon make bar coding of drug formulations mandatory.

According to sources, this matter was broached at a high level meeting between the industry and the regulatory authorities convened by the DCGI recently. The main aim behind advocating bar coding is to ensure that all the companies including the small scale units should ensures that each business unit is uniquely identified to improve efficiency and to maintain their competitive edge.

The DCGI in the meeting informed that under the Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) there exists a subsidy scheme for small scale units where 75 per cent of the initial cost for switching over to bar coding is reimbursed to the manufacturers with provision of reimbursement of certain per cent of recurring expenses in subsequent two years.

Interestingly, industry is not aware of any such scheme. T S Jaishankar, chairman, Confederation of Indian Pharmaceutical Industry (CIPI) said that the industry has no information about the scheme.

Supporting the adoption of bar coding, Jaishankar said, “Bar codes can be very effectively used to track distribution of drugs in the marketplace and recall them if necessary. It also assists in effectively monitoring stock and consumption in hospitals. We will be happy to request all the federation members to impress upon their manufacturing units who have not so far adopted bar coding, to do so at the earliest, because this will be in their interest and in the interest of the industry as a whole.”

He informed that as of now there is no bar coding system adopted in any small scale manufacturing unit whereas in the medium scale manufacturing about 20 to 30 companies may have implemented it. “Though the whole process is complex it is always good to have bar coding system in place. Initially it will be a bit costly but if all the companies are going to implement the software it will gradually become cheaper with high demand,” Jaishankar said.

He feels that the government should make it mandatory because by having such system the subscriber products are numbered and bar coded as per GS1 rules and can be uniquely identified in any other country across the world using bar code scanners. In fact, major retailers and manufacturers do not purchase products that do not conform to GS1 standards. Thus looking at it this way, having bar- coding system is a good step as it provides unique identification to a company and their products worldwide.

Bar codes are a series of vertical bars and spaces, which enable automatic data capture. They are graphical machine readable formats which enables bar code scanners connected to computer systems automatically read this information accurately and immediately, in a fast and accurate manner. They can be connected to computer databases containing information like product identity, manufacturer and brand owner identity, batch number, expiry dates etc. which can be retrieved from the computer databases on scanning these bar codes.