Drug companies on different RFID frequencies

Second in a series of reports from last November's RFID Healthcare Industry Adoption Summit in Arlington, VA. Bruce Cohen, director of packaging technology for GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), said that his company was ready to start tagging one of its drugs, which he declined to identify. Cohen made it clear that GSK was honoring its commitment to the Food and Drug Administration, which in February 2004 agreed to give pharmaceutical manufacturers some breathing room to implement RFID tagging voluntarily. At that time GSK pledged that it would tag at least one product within 12 to 18 months. But Randall Lutter, associate commissioner of the FDA, told attendees at the conference sponsored by the National Assn. of Chain Drug Stores and the Healthcare Distribution Management Assn., "From our vantage point today, it appears a voluntary approach may not be enough. At this point we have become concerned about the slow or inadequate progress [being made in] implementing an electronic pedigree." Lutter's impatience aside, the conference featured evidence that the pharmaceutical industry is not exactly mired in RFID mud. Even generic drug manufacturers, who have been lagging behind on RFID for the most part, are expanding their implementations.