Checking medicines by series online. Expensive drugs can be checked for authenticity

A person is not able to do without taking drugs. IN Lately one has to doubt the authenticity of drugs, even when buying them at a pharmacy. What to do in this case? There are online services, thanks to which each of you can check the medicine for authenticity by serial number. How to check medications for a series and not only, let's find out about it together.

What do you need to know?

There is a widespread opinion among consumers about the counterfeiting of medicines, even in pharmacies. It is difficult for a person to verify the authenticity, but at the same time he wants to buy only real ones, quality drugs because it concerns the health of him and his loved ones. In order not to buy fake medicine, you need to know a few simple rules able to help every consumer.

The work of each pharmacy is primarily a business. His main goal is to maximize profits from consumers. In this type of business, there is high competition, which is constantly growing. As a result of high competition, there is a decline in income.

Some drugstores turned out to be uncompetitive and stopped working. But not all pharmacies were closed against the backdrop of high competition, many continued to work, not caring about the welfare of consumers.

This picture gives reason for unscrupulous pharmacists to resort to deception. As a result, they began to sell fake drugs. In such a situation, people suffer. Any drugs can be faked, both average in price and expensive, which is especially scary. True, pharmacists do not dare to fake expensive drugs, since there is little income from such drugs.

If you are taking expensive drugs, then you need to be sure of their authenticity. Indeed, in addition to the money thrown to the wind, you can only harm your health when taking such drugs. What you need to know to check the authenticity of drugs purchased at the pharmacy?

Accurate verification data

If you have any doubts about the quality of the purchased pharmacological preparations, then first of all, you can check the quality of medicines using the services of the supervisory authority. Specialists will be able to conduct an assessment and after the completion of the examination they will provide documentation on the conformity of the goods. If, after the study, you were issued a conclusion with a negative result, then you can contact the Consumer Protection Assurance Committee. At the same time, every buyer who comes across a fake medicine has full right present claims not only for damages, but also for non-pecuniary damage.

In order to be sure that the authenticity of the medicine is on highest level, drugs should be purchased only in municipal pharmacies, bypassing all sorts of dubious pharmacies. If you buy medicines through online pharmacies, then it is better to purchase drugs in time-tested, good places, for example, paniapteka.ua.

If you buy drugs in a pharmacy, it is recommended to pay attention to a few simple points. You should not pay for goods at a pharmacy if you notice the following:

• In the text of the annotation attached to the preparation, you noticed grammatical or spelling errors;
• After examining the packaging, you did not find it: “best before ...”;
• There is no gloss on the packaging going to the drug;
• Medicinal preparation does not have its own passport and quality certificate;
• It was not possible to find the manufacturer, his phone number and address on the packaging.

Checking medicine at home

Are you thinking of authenticating medications can only give them for examination? In fact, this is not so, today there is an easy way available to everyone that allows you to check the authenticity of purchased tablets at home. In each annotation attached to the drug, the time of its absorption is indicated. In order to verify the authenticity of such a fact, it is recommended to place one of the tablets in a container of water and note the time.

If the medicine turned out to be genuine, then it must dissolve without residue for the period of time that was indicated in the instructions attached to it. In the event that the tablet did not have time to dissolve completely or left behind a precipitate, then this indicates that you have a fake in front of you.

Also, before you make a purchase of a medicine in a pharmacy, you must definitely compare the information in the certificate with the data on the package. Such simple action will allow the consumer to know exactly what he is going to buy.

You need to be extremely careful when buying expensive medications, because today you can easily come across a fake. You should not buy medicines from hands or in dubious places, because it is extremely difficult to determine their quality “by eye”. Take care of your health, only in municipal pharmacies of the city and carefully study the data on the package. Don't skimp on your health!

On February 1, the government launched an experiment to label medicines with individual QR codes. Manufacturers will put them on each package, and the buyer will be able to check the origin of each particular drug box at the pharmacy. This is similar to how elite alcohol is now checked according to the Unified State Automated Information System.

So far, this experiment is voluntary and is being carried out in six regions: Moscow, Moscow region, St. Petersburg, Belgorod, Veliky and Nizhny Novgorod. The system will be tested on expensive and important medicines. Manufacturers, wholesalers and pharmacy chains will decide for themselves whether to install labeling equipment and code readers or not.

From 2018, drug labeling will become mandatory.

Cure for cunning 💉

As it was before?

Manufacturers and sellers are not required to label medicines and enter codes into a single system. The buyer could not verify that the blood pressure pills or cough syrup were genuine. Distributors and pharmacies did not have uniform control mechanisms.

What changed?

The government has figured out how to protect drug buyers from fakes. Manufacturers will apply an individual security code to each package and indicate it in common system monitoring. Using these codes, you can track the path of packaging from the factory to the pharmacy.

Distributors and pharmacy chains will be able to control the authenticity of each batch. Readers will be installed at points of sale so that customers can scan codes and check medicines themselves. Later, they will write an application for a smartphone to make checking even easier.

Who needs it and why?

The state needs it so that distributors and pharmacies do not sell counterfeit goods and pay taxes. If there are no fakes on the market, people will be healthier and less money will be needed for healthcare from the budget. Forgeries themselves will be able to detect pharmacies and customers, and the state will save on checks. Hospitals will not buy drugs with an expiring expiration date under the state order and will not waste budget money.

Manufacturers need it. When people buy a fake, the manufacturer does not receive his proceeds. Some Chinese factory receives this proceeds. Fake does not help with pressure or headaches, and buyers stop trusting the brand. If there are no fakes on the market, manufacturers will receive more money.

This is what pharmacies need. When customers think that a pharmacy sells fakes, they stop going there. If a fake is found in a pharmacy, it will be closed and fined. Fakes will be seized, and no one will compensate for the losses. When the monitoring system is operational, pharmacies will check each batch themselves and reduce their risks. The system will notify if the tablets have expired, and the pharmacist will send the application to the supplier in time. And pharmacies will earn more because customers will trust them.

This is what buyers need. Medicines will no longer be counterfeited. Pharmacies will stop selling gelatin instead of vitamins and calcium gluconate instead of cholesterol pills. People will recover faster.

Why do an experiment? Let them immediately launch the scheme in all regions!

An experiment is needed to evaluate the operation of the equipment and information system. Need to test the software and find weak spots monitoring. The Federal Tax Service, the Ministry of Communications and the Ministry of Health will learn to exchange data and reports. Pharmacy chains will gradually purchase readers and train employees.

Even during the experiment, the state considers the costs and approves the list of equipment.

When the drug labeling law becomes mandatory, everyone will be comfortable working.

An experiment is being conducted in my region. What should I do?

Check with pharmacies for the availability of a reader. If there is a reader, check the medicines before paying at the checkout. If the pharmacy is not participating in the experiment, ask when it plans to join. The more customers ask these questions, the faster the pharmacy will install the equipment.

How about others?

The drug labeling and verification system is in place in Europe. It took 10 years to implement it. In Russia, they want to launch this technology in a year.

We are already working one system alcohol labels and fur products. And the experiment in certain regions held before

It's a shame to overpay for a fake that you were given as branded expensive thing. But the purchase of “left” medicines and treatment with counterfeit medicines not only undermines the family budget, but also causes irreparable harm to the health of a sick person. Content counterfeit drugs may be useless or harmful to him. Over 10% on sale today medicines manufactured in underground factories, and have nothing in common in composition with the original products.

Fake cheap is not profitable

By purchasing an inexpensive domestic medicine in a pharmacy, you can be sure of its composition. No one will bother with the clandestine production of analgin, iodine, calcium gluconate and furacilin.

The purpose of any fraud is to obtain light large illegal income. However, imitating a cheap cough mixture or aspirin, you won’t get a lot of fat. But the drug cost equal to the subsistence level and more expensive, it is worth checking for authenticity.

The so-called generics (inexpensive legal and proven analogues expensive drugs). Such legitimate "twins" do not indicate which drug they are analogous to. They are easy to distinguish from fakes: the name of the company will not be indicated on the package or in the annotation, but only the active active substances are marked.

Package

Advice. Do not throw away old boxes and jars of expensive medicines. Sometimes, to find out the truth, it is enough to compare the quality of the inscriptions and drawings on the goods offered with them.

1. The packaging must indicate the country of origin and the expiration date.
2. If there are errors and omissions in the texts on the packaging or in the instructions, then this indicates falsification.
3. Be sure to have instructions for use in Russian.
4. Authenticity is evidenced by a clear font that is not erased or blurred from moisture and drawings of the same quality.
5. The packaging must be marked with numbers corresponding to the serial number of the product. Exactly the same number must be affixed to the accompanying certificate.
6. For this product, embossing, inscriptions of the drug name and expiration date on blisters with tablets and capsules are required.

Well-known manufacturers of expensive drugs, taking care of their reputation, make packaging from high-quality material. Their product will never contain:

• crushed, opened capsules;
• chipped curved ampoules;
• uneven, crushed tablets and pills.

Help from Roszdravnadzor

To dispel the last doubts about the authenticity of the medicine, you can take it to the nearest division of Roszdravnadzor and write an application for a quality examination. In the laboratory, careful chemical analysis drug and its compliance with the declared composition is clarified.

The authenticity of the medicine can also be found by going online to the Roszdravnadzor website on the Internet. It is enough to enter a name in the service medicinal product, its series, and the information system will automatically check the status of the product in a few minutes, comparing it with the list of those withdrawn from the distribution network, rejected in Russia.

Advice. Don't buy medications at dealers medical workers, private individuals and beauty salons. The most reliable place for the sale of certified medicines is state-owned pharmacies.

An experiment on drug labeling started on February 1 in six regions of the country. Following fur coats and alcohol, its own "black mark" will appear on medicines. However, the label is not entirely black: the DataMatrix marking looks like a drawn maze (see photo on the first page), it will be applied using a special printer to each package, supplementing the existing barcode. "Pilot" will start with several types of medicines, and over time, all manufactured medicines will be "marked" in a row. Why is this needed? What will give buyers? And, in the end, how much will it cost and will the medicines become more expensive?

In the Kaluga region, in the Vorsino industrial park, there is a modern pharmaceutical plant: several dozen types of tablets are produced and packaged here. Packs of pills packaged in blisters run along the conveyor belt. Here is also a printer that can "draw" a labyrinth of the desired configuration in a fraction of a second.

“We support the idea of ​​introducing labeling, so we decided to enter the experiment without delay,” said production director Gennady Pyatsky. will be encoded in it. Product identifier, serial number and batch number, expiration date is a minimum. The system is flexible, it can "fit" a sea of ​​\u200b\u200binformation. Time is allotted to solve all these details until the summer. Our equipment allows you to apply DataMatrix, because everything our factories - both in Europe and in Russia - are built according to the same standards and are equipped with the same type. And in Europe, they have been implementing such marking since 2010." According to Pyatsky, if labeling rules similar to those in Europe are introduced on the Russian pharmaceutical market, the process can go fairly quickly and painlessly.

Why was it decided to choose a special two-dimensional DataMatrix code for marking? Firstly, this is not an expensive technology (according to calculations, the cost of one package of medicine will increase by 1-1.5 rubles, or, if we talk about drugs in the middle price segment, by only 1%). On the other hand, such an identification would allow automatic mode identify substandard and counterfeit medicines. Finally, thirdly, such marking has already been introduced in Europe, Turkey, the USA, India, and Brazil. It is also being introduced in Ukraine - so a single type of drug identification will help different countries unite and fight against counterfeiting better together. "In the EU countries, such marking is already mandatory, in any case, we print a two-dimensional code on all our products," says Pyatsky.

"Labeling has undeniable "pluses" for business," says Dmitry Bagley, an expert in labeling technologies. "It will not only reduce the losses of bona fide manufacturers and sellers from counterfeit goods, but will also improve logistics, since it will be possible to quickly track the movement of goods."

It is clear that special equipment is required for marking. Equipping one production line, according to Dmitry Bagley, will cost pharmaceutical companies between 30,000 and 150,000 euros. But investments are long-term, and besides, thanks to labeling, manufacturers will reduce image losses from falling into the sale of "left" drugs.

“Imagine: a person buys a medicine from a specific manufacturer, and inside there is a “dummy” that does not heal. But the patient does not know that he bought a counterfeit and transfers all the negativity to the pharmaceutical company indicated on the label,” Gennady Pyatsky explained. “Therefore, all companies "We are interested that if a counterfeit or counterfeit is found, this batch is withdrawn from sale immediately. The barcode does not provide such efficiency, but DataMatrix - please. I leaned the scanner against the brand - and in a second you get an answer: is a particular pack of medicine legal or not. "

It is interesting that not only specialists - distributors, pharmacists of pharmacies will be able to arrange such a check "for falsity". In the pharmacy there will be special scanners for each seller, and besides, it will be publicly available, in the trading floor - for buyers. So anyone can verify the legality of the purchased medicine with the help of such a scanner. Moreover, it will be possible to "read" the marking using a regular smartphone, if you install a special application on it.

What DataMatrix will cost the buyer

The biggest concern is how the introduction of labeling will affect the price of the drug. It is one thing to mark a fur coat worth several tens and even hundreds of thousands of rubles, and quite another when we are talking about a socially significant product.

However, experts interviewed by RG do not see a serious price threat in the innovation. "It is difficult to talk about a rise in the price of medicines due to labeling, since this percentage will vary for different drugs. We can only talk about the cost of labeling the packaging, which is about 1.5 rubles without taking into account the costs of informatization and equipment necessary for the functioning of the system from distributors and pharmacies", - considers CEO DSM Group Sergey Shulyak.

Elena Nevolina, head of the Pharmacy Guild, agrees with the expert. The cost of a scanner for a pharmacy is about 20 thousand rubles, the investment is feasible, and the cost of medicines will not be seriously affected. “Of course, several scanners will be required, but I think, since the program is state-owned, pharmacies will be helped with re-equipment,” Nevolina suggested. She recalled that from July 1, all pharmacies, like other enterprises retail, switch to the use of new cash registers equipped with scanners to record trade turnover in the Federal Tax Service. "It is important that the equipment is compatible. If you have to work with two different scanners, there will be a risk of errors," - said the expert.

Help "RG"

Participation in the experiment was announced by: Moscow and the Moscow region, St. Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod, Novgorod, Belgorod regions. The "pilot" includes 23 pharmaceutical manufacturers, large distribution companies, over 30 hospitals and clinics, and more than 250 pharmacies, including large chains.

Until June, the entire technological chain will have to be launched: to install equipment and software, to train specialists. And as we are ready to cover the labeling of more and more names of drugs.

If the experiment justifies itself and the labeling covers all manufactured medicines, the monitoring system will track about 6 billion drug packages per year and cover more than 350 thousand participants in the circulation, including about 1000 domestic and foreign drug manufacturers, over 100 thousand hospitals and 250 thousand pharmacies.