EU Safety Features Q&A v16

The European Commission has issued version 16 of their Q&A on Safety Features. This version adds two new questions and revises four compared to a previous version, with most of the additions and revisions addressing the issue of false alarms, which are currently running at an unacceptably high rate of around 3%.

In this revision manufacturers are “strongly encouraged” to use only uppercase letters in serial and batch numbers, to avoid the use of special characters such as hyphens and question marks and not to use the letters I, O, Y, or Z.

The EMVO is warning of the slow pace of adoption at which manufacturers are registering drugs into its European Medicines Verification System (EMVS) system. They estimate that as of July, 40% of manufacturers and 25% of other supply chain actors such as pharmacies, hospitals, wholesalers and dispensing doctors had not yet connected to the system.

The new version can be found in the EU Marketed Products section of the NSF App.