RFID In Pharmaceuticals Market

Global RFID in Pharmaceuticals Market: Snapshot 

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has played a vital role in escalating the widespread adoption of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) in the pharmaceutical sector to strengthen anti-counterfeiting and track-and-trace efforts. Besides these benefits, RFID technology is acknowledged for its ability to increase supply chain efficiency, reduce errors by proper storage of information, boost patient safety and monitoring, enhance staff, patient, and asset workflow, easy adoption and flexible usage, and cut down labor requirements. 

With the pharmaceutical sector being a highly critical area, there is a pressing need to have highly efficient systems. Therefore, certain limitations of the technology restrict the RFID in pharmaceuticals market from realizing its utmost potential. These limitations include tampering concerns, technical issues, and compatibility and standardization issues. Another major factor holding back the market is the high cost of implementation. Industrial experts believe that these issues are interrelated. The high cost is limiting widespread adoption and at the same time, the implementation rate of RFID across the pharmaceutical sector is not considerable enough to make the technology cheap. However, the aforementioned limitations are being addressed by technological advancements, which are likely to render the global RFID in pharmaceuticals market highly opportunistic. 

The majority of players in the global RFID in pharmaceuticals market are focusing towards technological advancements and product innovation to improve their visibility in the market. Large players are pouring hefty funds into research and development activities to offer products and services that are advanced and in line with the requirements of the pharmaceutical sectors. Most of the leading players in the market are players with strong brand name, high technical expertise, and strong capital muscle.

Global RFID in Pharmaceuticals Market: Overview 

Radio frequency identification, popularly known by the acronym RFID, has a host of applications in different areas. Healthcare and pharmaceuticals is one of them. RFID tracking systems have come in handy in lowering human efforts and errors in maintenance and control of healthcare inventory. Some of its popular applications are in tracking medical equipment in hospitals, identifying patients, monitoring blood transfer, and tracking of medication from pharmacy to patient. In the pharmaceutical sector, it helps in monitoring imports and exports of pharmaceutical raw materials, internal and external tracking of pharmaceuticals, and documenting the transfer of products from manufacturers to patients. 

Comprising of a small chip, which is capable of carrying up to 2000 bytes and an antenna, the RFID devices do a job similar to that of a bar code or a magnetic strip on the back of a credit card or ATM card – provide a unique identifier for an object. Like a bar code or magnetic strip, an RFID device must also be scanned to gather the identifying information. 

Global RFID in Pharmaceuticals Market: Trends and Opportunities 

The pharmaceuticals sector is faced with many challenges on the logistics front. These include product recalls due to overstocking which often results in expiry of drugs. Counterfeit drugs is another issue hobbling as it puts the patient’s safety at risk. Further, prescription packaged drugs are difficult to read and patients not taking the proper prescribed dose medication is another problem. To tackle all such challenges RFID can be leveraged successfully. 

RFID technology enables better tracking and accountability resulting in improved reliability in drug approval process. It also allows tracking of drug intake via the testing protocol. Also, enhanced inventory tracking with RFID can aid in bringing down buffer stocks thereby slashing cost. All these benefits have majorly contributed to the demand for RFID in the pharmaceuticals sector. 

This market is also filliped by the rising demand for more efficient anti-counterfeit solutions for drugs that would ensure product security, quality, and efficient usability. The US FDA has recommended a set of rules and regulations to be applied in RFID for the pharmaceutical industry. Countering the swift uptake of RFID in pharmaceuticals market, however, is the steep cost of installation and deployment of RFID tracking systems. Dearth of awareness about the long term financial advantages of RFID technology is another factor crimping growth in the market. 

Global RFID in Pharmaceuticals Market: Regional Outlook 

North America and Europe are dominant markets for RFID in the pharmaceuticals sector because of favorable government initiatives, growing thrust on cost reduction through operational efficiency, and major drug counterfeit events. Asia Pacific is slated to exhibit solid growth in the years ahead due to cheaper original equipment manufacturing (OEM) services provided by China and rapid uptake of RFID systems in healthcare in the region. 

Companies Mentioned in Report 

To present an accurate and detailed assessment of the competition prevailing in the market for RFID in the pharmaceutical sector, the report profiles companies such as IBM Corporation, Alien Technology, Hewlett-Pakard, Siemens, Motorola, Inc., Texas Instruments, Toshiba Tech, and Zebra Technologies Corporation.  

Global RFID in Pharmaceuticals Market, by Geography

• North America
• Asia Pacific
• Europe
• Rest of the World 

This report gives you access to decisive data such as: 

• Market growth drivers
• Factors limiting market growth
• Current market trends
• Market structure
• Market projections for the coming years