One individual vehemently argued that Pfizer's RFID trial "proves" the viability of RFID technology for the pharmacy supply chain. (Perhaps unsurprisingly, he worked for a technology vendor.)
Therefore, I was especially interested in a just-published interview with John Theriault, Pfizer's vice president of global security. (See Pfizer security exec offers status report on counterfeiting - note that this link is only free for 14 days.) Check out these statements:
- "RFID is a long way from being deployable. It's very expensive and, for it to work, you have to have the technology deployed at every point along the supply chain."
- "As long as repackaging is legal in the United States and actually encouraged in the E.U., whatever anti-tampering or anti-counterfeiting placed on the packaging is lost as soon as it changes hands."
- "The technology solution is not a solution. It's an interesting area to explore, but I don't see it solving the counterfeit problem any time soon."