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RFID Labels On Prescription Drug Bottles
sonik1 writes "The New York Times is reporting that the Food and Drug Administration and several major drug makers are expected to announce an agreement Monday to put tiny radio antennas on the labels of millions of medicine bottles to combat counterfeiting and fraud. RFID labels provide a unique identifier that is almost impossible to copy. When pharmacists receive delivery, they should be able to pass a wand over the bottles and, through an online database, check the history of each. Each label costs 20 to 50 cents."
Initially, the expense of the system will be considerable. Each label costs 20 to 50 cents. The readers and scanners cost thousands of dollars. But because the medicines tend to be very expensive and the need to ensure their authenticity is great, officials said, the expense is justified.
As if my three prescription drugs don't cost enough already (and my co-pays continue to increase) I am going to have to subsidize a possible invasion of my privacy as well? Are they going to insure that before I leave that pharmacy counter that the tag's information will be wiped?
I certainly don't want to be heading towards the door with Oxy and have some hi-tech thief scan me and follow me home to rob me of the drugs I just purchased... Perhaps even someone could scan important/famous people and either blackmail them for their drug purchases (HIV/STDs) or just blatantly report it to the Fish Wrappers for cash.
Costs are still far too high for individual consumer goods, like the amber bottles that pharmacies use to dispense pills to individuals. But prices are expected to plunge once radio labels become popular, so drug makers represent an important set of early adopters.
Once it does become viable for individual consumer bottles there will be yet another excuse why the prices need to continue to go up. Everything needs to cost more especially in the pharmaceutical industry. I swear everyone is in on it. I am told I need three low dose drugs when I have a feeling that a higher dose of another would handle it just fine. I am told that I am being prescribed these particular drugs because my coverage is good enough to afford it... It all leads to more money for everyone.
This still doesn't stop someone from switching the drugs once they arrive at the pharmacy.
Counterfeit drugs are still comparatively rare in the United States, but federal officials say the problem is growing. Throughout the 1990's, the F.D.A. pursued about five cases of counterfeit drugs every year. In each of the last several years, the number of cases has averaged about 20, but law-enforcement officials say that figure does not reflect the extent of the problem.
Then WTF are we doing this? 20 cases of counterfeit drugs yet we have to spend thousands and thousands and pass that on to the consumer. Ugh. Yeah, they are going to say that we need to protect against a possible outbreak of this. Personally, I don't see how a label can help when the medicine inside is what is important. Anyone can swap out the real meds inside for their counterfeit ones.
RFID labels provide a unique identifier that is almost impossible to copy.
Really?
It's a Bagel.
One would assume conterfeit drugs are being sold from unethical pharmacies; how then will giving pharmacies the ability to detect conterfeit drugs be of any use in this situation? Unethical pharmacies will go on selling counterfeit drugs: how are consumers supposed to tell the difference? We don't have RFID readers.
Are they saying counterfeit drugs are being introduced into the supply chain in deliveries from the manufacturers themselves? This is the online thing that these chips will counteract, and at the same time will have numerous disadvantages for the consumer: higher cost any tom dick and harry with a reader knowing what you are buying, continued data mining.
Meine Schwester ist sehr, sehr reizvoll - Nietzsche
Unless measures are taken to disable the RFID tag once the bottles leave the pharmacy, then this is probably a violation of HIPPA. Pharmacies are not even allowed to put the medications name on the outside of the sack anymore. But this could be read from a distance.
Yeah, but you can keep that private by doing something radical like putting the bottle in your pocket where curious eyes can't see the label. With an RFID, it can be read at some distance even when squirreled away in a bag or pocket.
I really do think this could be a big deal. There has been an increasing trend in pharmacy to just dispense full, prepackaged bottles of pills (why it still takes 30 minutes to fill is a mystery since all they do is stick a label on). If these things have RFIDs it certainly poses privacy concerns. If I had a pharmacy I would worry about it. The stupid HIPPA laws provide for $10,000 fine and 10 years in prison for disclosing someones protected health information. If you have some technology on the prescriptions that makes it possible for someone's medical information to be gleaned even though that person took reasonable pains to hide it (ie. putting the bottle where it's not out in the open), you could be liable.
this will also help the current administration with the drugs from Canada issue. Now they can say: "The ones from Canada got no antennas so we can't allow them in!"
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Ok, here's another look at it. I'm not saying that you're wrong, and I hope that you aren't, but I just don't trust large corporations to not screw us over.
Let's say it's $0.20/large bottle to tag and each large bottle on average fills 20 perscriptions. That SHOULD only raise the price about $0.01/perscription. Which is barely noticable.
Now add in the cost of the RFID reader. I don't know how expensive these things are, but I'm sure they're more than a couple of dollars. Now install at least one reader in each pharmacy. Now train each pharmacy tech to use the equipment. See how fast the costs can increase? Companies will most likely want to make up for these costs ASAP, so they'll increase prices immediately instead of trying to spread the costs over a year with only slightly higher prices. Once the insurance companies are paying these prices, the pharmacies have no incentive to lower the prices (citing continued maintenence and training costs). This, of course, causes insurance premiums to go up and we won't even talk about what happens to the uninsured.
Look, all this RFID chat is great... Wal-Mart using it on pallets of product, Drug companies tagging shipments with it, even Tesco and their RFID/picture setup. I'm pretty damn sure we can expect to see UPS/FedEx take it on soon as well.... I mean, how simple would THAT be, having a series of tags made up to chirp tracking numbers. Then you can chirp a whole crate as it is being loaded on an airplane and get the individual package responses.
;-)
My complaint is: WHAT ABOUT THE GODDAMN AIRLINES?!?! I've been complaining for _years_ now that the airlines have a ridiculous loss rate in comparison to FedEx or UPS, and now there's a technology that could turn baggage handling into a MUCH more efficient creature and I haven't heard word one about the airlines' attempts at it. Simply put, imagine RFID scanners in the holds of every aircraft, on the exit point of every baggage carousel, etc. Performing a systemwide search would be as simple as querying that package's ID, much as we idealize (and FedEx and UPS leverage) barcoding to create the same tracking record. RFID comes as an advantage in that it can be used to actively monitor items in holding and in transit; e.g. instead of being recorded as the last movement of the package is 'Deposited Into Holding Area B', the 60 second scan record shows that the package is currently located there, or if it has been moved into, say, Holding Area C, without being barcode scanned first. (I know, I'm explaining a simple concept, but the simplicity is what makes most people misunderstand the current setup). Airlines: sit up and take notice... RFID can remove peoples' trust issues with baggage handling for you. Pursue this opportunity, instead of complaining about how broke you are.
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-cheez
Not all people (think the visually impared, illiterate, non-english speaking, etc) can read the bottles, and some computer assistance can certainly help with the medication...
For us carnivores, "Sucking the marrow out of life" isn't a transcendentalist philosophy but a practical instruction.
Phony medicines have surfaced in pharmacies from Florida to Hawaii, including tens of thousands of doses discovered in warehouses of the Big Three wholesalers.
Last summer, nearly 200,000 tablets of Lipitor, the world's best-selling cholesterol-lowering medication, was found to be counterfeit and recalled by a small Missouri wholesaler. Some of the pills had already reached Rite Aid and CVS pharmacies.
It can be harder to become licensed as a beautician than as a pharmaceutical distributor. With a $700 permit fee and a $200 bond, a pair of Florida manicurists got a license to sell intravenous drugs. An auto body shop owner in Miami got a license to sell drugs in Maryland. Nevada awarded a license to a 23-year-old former restaurant hostess to operate an Internet pharmacy that specialized in narcotics.
Florida gave licenses to at least a half-dozen felons, records show. Two states -- Georgia and Tennessee -- gave a wholesaler license to James R. Suozzo of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., a convicted cocaine user with a long history of heroin abuse, investigative records show. Suozzo's background surfaced when he was arrested in February on suspicion of attempting to sell adulterated Procrit, Epogen and Neupogen to another small wholesaler.
Translation to you and me:
The current method of licensing and validating people that sell prescription drugs is inadequate.
Translation to government funded by corps:
The current method of validating large shipments of pharmiceutical's can be improved by increasing the cost by funding another company's product -- RFID tags.
Real world implications:
Being that I have worked with RFID tags before, I know that it is pretty trivial to create your own scanning station. There is no security on who scans the tags.
If your spam mailbox is anything similar to mine, you will notice a large number of prescription drugs in it. Which means that there must be a decent market for them. Things like oxycotton (synthetic heroin), xanex, vicoden, viagra, cialis, and old school drugs like tylox, valium, etc are in very high demand.
Now, these companies are going to start shipping 18 wheelers that can be remotely scanned for their contents by name and quanity.
If this were to start happening, I predict a large number of truckers being robbed and possibly killed for their payload. A single 18 wheeler can now have a payload worth more than a Brinks truck without the hastle of an armed truck and armed drivers.
Even including the "universal health care tax," Canada and Europe achieve better results (lower infant mortality, longer average lifespans) than the US and at lower cost than the US, regardless whether you measure in dollars per capita or as fraction of GDP.
There is no question that the US system of medicine is quite inefficient compared to other industrial nations. However, drug costs are not a significant contributor to this inefficiency.
The greatest source of inefficiency in the US is that Congress requires insurance companies to pay for state-of-the-art care even when a much cheaper, but inferior treatment would produce almost as good results at a fraction of the price.
Even for the uninsured, physicians and hospitals often choose expensive courses of treatment because saving money with alternatives, which might be marginally inferior but much cheaper, would potentially expose them to lawsuits if things turned out badly.
In Europe, the government will pay for therapy they consider cost-effective and often make you wait for it. If you want something fancier or want faster service, you're free to pay for it yourself. This gives people an incentive to ask whether they really want the state of the art, since it might cost them out of their own pocketbook.
In the US, everyone with insurance is decoupled from market forces and feels entitled to spend unlimited amounts on medical care in exchange for a small annual premium. This is not the way to get a market to operate efficiently.
The ?intolerable? prices that Angell writes about are confined to the brand-name sector of the American drug marketplace. As the economists Patricia Danzon and Michael Furukawa recently pointed out in the journal Health Affairs, drugs still under patent protection are anywhere from twenty-five to forty per cent more expensive in the United States than in places like England, France, and Canada. Generic drugs are another story. Because there are so many companies in the United States that step in to make drugs once their patents expire, and because the price competition among those firms is so fierce, generic drugs here are among the cheapest in the world. And, according to Danzon and Furukawa?s analysis, when prescription drugs are converted to over-the-counter status no other country even comes close to having prices as low as the United States.
They also complain, rightly, about $500,000,000 advertising campaigns designed to lie to doctors and patients. This and other monkey shines, like lobbying for expensive equipment that gets around state laws, is the fault of drug companies and they deserve their criticism.
The problem is that drug companies that are run by patent jokers of the "shark fin" variety in your linked article. They are scummy enough to lie to their customers, and abuse the patent office. They now seem to be moving ahead to eliminate their cheaper competition by requiring expensive equipment supposedly aimed at stopping a non exitstent problem. This bill will suit them well by raising the costs overall and eliminating the threat of reimportation.
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