The EU Falsified Medicines Directive - A Concept for Drug Decommissioning in Hospitals.

The EU falsified Medicines Directive 2011/62/EU will be applied in Switzerland as well. It mandates unique identifiers on medication packages and a process to ensure that these identifiers are decommissioned when the medication package is handed to the patient. While this is not a major problem for Swiss community pharmacies, it is yet unclear how decommissioning shall be managed within hospitals. This paper analyses the drug supply chain in 5 Swiss hospitals and drafts a system architecture to support a decommissioning process upon arrival of new drug deliveries at the hospital pharmacy.