Is Track and Trace dead for 6 years with the Ridley-Thomas legislation allowing pharma 6-7 years to bring mass serialization to their shipments? Hardly. As Gregg Metcalf of Nosco noted today in his keynote address at the Graphics of Americas Brand Protection Conference (http://www.graphicsoftheamericas.com/conferences/bpc.html), other legislation is in the works, which may even speed up adoption in California.

My friend and HP colleague, Ray Dickinson, provided this link, for example:

http://www.pharmaceuticalcommerce.com/frontEnd/main.php?idSeccion=1081

This article (worth a read) begins: "While some wind went out of the sails of the national effort to implement item-level tracking of pharmaceuticals after California postponed its e-pedigree rules in September, new developments continue to push the topic along. These events are occurring both in Washington (at FDA and, potentially, in the U.S. Congress) as well as in Brussels, Belgium, home of both the European Parliament and the GS1 organization, whose GS1 Healthcare Group is producing a lot of paper (if not actually standards) on its campaign for identifying and tracking everything related to healthcare products."

Indeed, the Obama administration seems very interested (look at the headlines) in changing the game for Healthcare. So, there will be government regulation. The GS1, skilled at working across international boundaries (thus, the "lack" of standards--they provide solutions, not laws), makes sense for commerce. Stay tuned. Much more in the works here, and more to post in the coming few weeks.

Cheers,

Steve