The entire Russian pharma supply chain is about to change. It all started with bill No. The bill became law in January As implemented, the law calls for serialization codes to have a cryptographic aspect. In January , serialization and crypto codes will become mandatory for all medicines imported into and traded inside Russia. However, some in the pharma industry see it as problematic, including the representatives of the Association of International Pharmaceutical Manufacturers AIMP.
The law affects the entire global market, not only Russia. Every serialization law clearly defines unique product identification UPID. It is designed to make the UPID safer and completely remove the risk of error from processes within the supply chain. Russian crypto code is actually a crypto tail comprising an electronic signature and a verification key.
The electronic signature is a sequence of 44 characters. The characters can be special symbols, numbers, and uppercase and lowercase letters. The verification key has four numbers and uppercase and lowercase letters. This crypto code greatly mitigates the risk of error and makes it very difficult for counterfeit medicines to enter the supply chain.
This data is nearly impossible to forge, guess, or reproduce. Adding a crypto tail means an additional 48 characters have to be encoded into the data matrix.
This means there will be new print and verification requirements. Furthermore, manufacturers will have to invest in equipment that can print the data matrices and verification systems that can read them.
