Statement 5.11

Section 5

“Hospital pharmacists should support and implement systems that allow traceability of all medicines dispensed by the pharmacy.”

What does it mean for patients? Medicines dispensed by the pharmacy can be subject to recall and should be identified as soon as possible to avoid administration of a qualitatively inadequate product or to enable to contact the patient if necessary. 

What does it mean for healthcare professionals? Traceability of medicines is an important topic not only in case of recall but also to track administration of specific products such as biological medicines. 

What does it mean for Hospital Pharmacists? Hospital pharmacists should ensure a system that enables tracing of distributed medicines. 

Hospital pharmacists should define the list of medicines that require tracing of batch number on the patients’ health record and guarantee that all health care professionals are informed and proceed. Hospital pharmacists should implement a system that enables automatic batch tracing on the patients’ health record e.g. using barcoding.