Turkish medicines verification app taking off?

An app designed to work alongside Turkey's medicines traceability system has been installed by Android users more than 100,000 times.

The app - called İlaç Takip Sistemi (ITS) Mobil - allows anyone with a smartphone to check the 2D datamatrix code on a pack of medicines and verify its authenticity.

The actual number of downloads and installs could be higher - Google's Play store only gives a range (100,000 to 500,000 installs) while Apple's App Store and Microsoft's equivalent for the Windows Phone do not publish download numbers.

Nevertheless there seems to be a reasonably-sized user community, although of course it cannot be established how many of those installs are from the general public and how many from people working within the pharma supply chain

On January 1, 2012, Turkey became the first country in the world to implement comprehensive legislation regarding traceability for 100 per cent of the medicines sold within its borders, with medicine packs identified using unique serial numbers.

Last year, the Turkish government took the decision to put medicines authentication into the hands of patients with the launch of the app, allows patients to confirm that their medicine is licensed by the Ministry of Health, not subject to a recall or out of date and authentic.

In Europe, where the pharmacists is viewed as the gatekeeper of verification, the option for patient verification looks less likely, at least in the European Stakeholder Model (ESM) of medicines verification which - according to its proponents - is likely to meet the requirements for safety features due to be published later this year.

An alternative model being drawn up by the European Directorate for the Quality of Medicines & Healthcare (EDQM) - called eTACT - does include verification by the consumer as well as at other points in the supply chain.