Pharmaceutical Rx: RFID

When VARBusiness asked solution providers in our annual State of Technology survey what they considered to be the next big technology breakthrough for their businesses in the next 12 months, 20 percent of respondents across the board said Radio Frequency Identification (RFID). Large VARs, in particular, seemed most excited about RFID, with 27 percent considering it the next technology breakthrough for their businesses, followed by 23 percent of midsize VARs and 13 percent of small VARs.

So far, RFID has been used by retail giant Wal-Mart in supply-chain management and as an aid in finding lost pets. Additionally, the health-care industry is considering implanting RFID chips in humans as a way of tracking patients' medical histories. And now, according to a recent analyst report by ABI Research, pharmaceutical companies are looking to employ RFID technology to eliminate the proliferation of counterfeit drugs on the supply chain, which has resulted in customers being given incorrect drugs, branded drugs being sold on the black market and a host of other legal problems for pharmaceutical firms. According to ABI Research, RFID technology would enable pharmaceutical companies to better control drug shipments through newly proposed state pedigree laws that require tracking a shipment through its entire life cycle.