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Skvortsova: Vital medicines will be labelled in 2018

27 February 2017

For now, the medicine labelling experiment concerns drugs from the list of “7 ICD codes”, while in 2018 the experiment will be extended to drugs from the list of vital and essential medicines, according to comments made by Russian Minister of Health Veronika Skvortsova during a session at the Russian Investment Forum in Sochi, per a report from TASS.  

The drug labelling experiment was launched in Russia in 2017. Based on this labelling, customers will be able to check the legitimacy of drugs using a smartphone or scanner at pharmacies.

Officials at the Federal Service for Surveillance in Healthcare are also confident that labelling with a 2D barcode will ensure automatic protection against substandard and counterfeit drugs.

“This system has already been launched this year. It was launched for the ‘7 ICD codes’ [a federal programme in which patients suffering from one of the seven rare diseases that are most expensive for treatment can count on the free provision of vital drugs], while next year it will apply to all drugs from the list of vital and essential medicines”, Skvortsova said.

At present, the list of vital and essential medicines includes 646 drugs. Skvortsova also noted that the labelling of drugs will not affect their cost.

“The optimal version is a barcode. It is cost-effective and will not affect the cost of drugs”, she said.

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