Cardinal Health To Deploy RFID in CA

Cardinal Health will integrate RFID technology into the operations of its Sacramento, CA pharmaceutical distribution center by Fall 2007, to comply with CA’s pedigree legislation that will require all drugs distributed within the state to be tracked and traced throughout the supply chain.

The results of the company’s RFID pilot program confirmed that RFID technology using UHF as a single frequency is a feasible solution to track and trace pharmaceuticals at the unit, case and pallet levels. The pilot also confirmed that RFID technology offers significant promise to provide added safety within the pharmaceutical supply chain, by enabling item-level pedigrees to be tracked and traced as they pass from manufacturer to wholesaler to pharmacy.

The recently passed state legislation in CA requires pharmaceutical manufacturers to originate item-level pedigrees for drugs distributed within the state’s borders. This legislation also requires companies within the pharmaceutical supply chain (including companies that distribute drugs) to update item-level drug pedigrees upon each change of ownership.

“While the Sacramento project is designed to support the pedigree legislation in CA, it’s also an extension of the end-to-end RFID pilot that we completed last year,” said Steve Inacker, executive vice president of Global Supplier Services for Cardinal Health. “We look forward to leveraging this work to further validate the effectiveness and viability of RFID technology in real-world settings, should it be adopted as an industry standard.”

As part of this effort, the company will also leverage the new data, made available by RFID technology, to identify efficiency opportunities in key areas including returns and order accuracy.