FRANCE’S CENTRE HOSPITALIER D’ARGENTEUIL TESTING OPTEL CERTA™ SOFTWARE TO PREPARE FOR EU’S FALSIFIED MEDICINES DIRECTIVE

Limerick, September 19, 2018 –  OPTEL GROUP, the world’s leading supplier of traceability solutions, is leveraging its 30 years of experience serving the pharmaceutical industry to help a major French hospital comply with the European Union’s Falsified Medicines Directive (EU FMD) for hospital pharmacies.

Located in Argenteuil, Val-d’Oise, and serving a population of 250,000, the Centre hospitalier d’Argenteuil is testing OPTEL Certa^TM Software, a solution that verifies 2D barcodes and decommissions the unique identifiers assigned to prescription medicines.

The main objectives of the pilot project are to:

• Evaluate the benefits and inconveniences of verifying medications as they arrive in pharmacy (“goods in”) and as they are dispensed to healthcare units and patients (“goods out”)
• Determine the extra time required to carry out these tasks and the optimal ways to do so
• Analyse what changes need to be made to pharmacy operations to optimise these new procedures and ensure that all items are properly decommissioned

OPTEL is now officially connected to France’s National Medicines Verification System (NMVS), France MVO, making it possible for medication with a 2D Data Matrix code to be successfully verified and decommissioned by the OPTEL Certa^TM Software.

This ability to communicate rapidly with France MVO would allow the Centre hospitalier Argenteuil to conform to the EU FMD’s serialisation and identification requirements for prescriptions medications, which take effect in February 2019.

Optel Certa helps hospital and retail pharmacies become more efficient by leveraging collected data. The software, which can either be used as a stand-alone solution or be integrated into a pharmacy’s existing IT infrastructure, provides unmatched visibility into pharmacy operations and enables staff to focus efforts on what truly matters: delivering the highest quality of patient care.

The project is in keeping with OPTEL’s goal of protecting patients from falsified medications by ensuring the authenticity and integrity of medical products.