The Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) Canada, in agreement with the Canadian Patient Safety Institute (CPSI), have "endorsed the adoption of the GS1 global standard for automated identification (e.g. bar coding) of pharmaceutical products in Canada".

According to the ISMP Canada Safety Bulletin, Volume 9, Number 4 (May 8, 2009),

"The use of bar coding (the most widely recognized machine-readable identifier) in a point-of-care scanning system, combined with a computerized database, allows healthcare professionals to verify that the right drug, in the right dose and by the right route of administration, is being given to the right patient at the right time."

See http://www.ismp-canada.org/download/safetyBulletins/ISMPCSB2009-4-PharmaceuticalBarCodingMovingForwardinCanada.pdf, please, for the full article.

Why barcoding? Same as before--it ties a physical mark to a physical object, with low fuss and as part of the normal printing process. Moreover, hybridizing (tying the bar code to another security/process control mechanism) with RFID is readily accomplished. But, starting with the bar code means that the recommendation can be adopted with little (or no) assumptions about the "asset inertia" in the pharma workflow.

Cheers,

Steve