Barriers to the Implementation of a Unique Identifier and a Track and Trace System in the Lebanese Pharmaceutical Sector

Abstract

Globalization of the pharmaceutical supply chain introduced many new challenges requiring innovative technologies to ensure patients’ access to safe and effective medicine. Adding a unique identifier and implementing a track and trace system on pharmaceuticals allow the traceability of products across the supply chain, ensuring quality by reducing counterfeit products, facilitating the recall process, increasing transparency and on the long run speeding up the reimbursement process by third party payers. There are several barriers preventing the implementation of the track and trace system in Lebanon. The aim of this operational research is to identify these barriers in local pharmaceutical institutions mainly local manufacturers and pharmacies; and providing recommendations to policymakers. Through a three-steps operational research, data was collected from local manufacturers through structured or semi-structured interviews, data was also collected form a purposive sample of pharmacies through focus groups and interviews, and finally key informants and policy makers were interviewed for a presentation of results and providing recommendations. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze quantitative results, while thematic analysis was used for qualitative data followed by exploratory data analysis. Different themes were identified for the barriers to implementation: financial, logistic, regulatory, internal planning/human resources and infrastructure issues/context specific.