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The barcode and the seal

What the pharmacist scans, why every prescription pack has a tamper seal, what you can check yourself, and what to do if a pack looks wrong.

Здесь описывается, как работают аптечные системы; это не медицинский совет, не диагноз и не справочник. Он не содержит названий аптек, адресов, номеров телефонов, времени работы или цен, поскольку они устаревают быстрее, чем страница может быть переиздана — все, что касается времени, уточняйте в самой аптеке. Ничто здесь не является поводом начинать, прекращать или менять лекарство: это принадлежит вашему лечащему врачу, а фармацевт за прилавком - самый быстрый профессионал, который может задать вопрос в это время.

The problem it was built for

Falsified medicines — packs that misrepresent their identity, their history or their source — reached the legal European supply chain often enough that the EU legislated. Directive 2011/62/EU amended the medicines code to add safety features to packs, and Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2016/161 specified them in detail. The system became mandatory across the EU and EEA on 9 February 2019, which is why every prescription pack you have handled since then carries a square dot-matrix code and a seal over the flap. It is one of the largest verification systems in European retail, and almost none of the people it protects have noticed it exists.

The two features

The first is a unique identifier: a serial number, product code, batch and expiry encoded in a 2D data-matrix code printed on the carton. It is unique to that individual pack, not to the product — two boxes of the same medicine carry different numbers. The second is an anti-tampering device: a seal, a glued flap or an equivalent, whose purpose is to make it visible if the carton has been opened. Together they answer two different questions: is this pack the one the manufacturer says it is, and has anyone been inside it since.

What the scan actually does

When a manufacturer packs a medicine, the unique identifier is uploaded to a European repository system and routed to the national repository of each country it may be sold in. When the pharmacy dispenses the pack, it scans the code, the system checks that this identifier exists and is still active, and the pack is decommissioned — marked as supplied. That is what makes a duplicate detectable: a second pack presenting the same identifier raises an alert, because the first one has already been dispensed. Wholesalers verify at defined points along the way. The system is operated by a European organisation together with national medicines verification organisations in each country.

What you can check yourself

Four things, none of which require equipment. The seal or glued flap should be intact — a carton that opens without resistance, or shows glue residue and re-sticking, is a reason to ask. The batch number and expiry date printed on the outer carton should match those on the blister or bottle inside. The leaflet should be in the language you would expect for the country of purchase, printed to a proper standard, with correct spelling of the medicine and the manufacturer. And the tablets should look and smell as they always have — an unexpected change in colour, marking, size or odour on a repeat is worth a question, even though a legitimate substitution also changes all of those, which is precisely why you ask rather than guess.

If something looks wrong

Do not take it. Do not throw it away either, because the pack is the evidence. Take it back to the pharmacy that supplied it, with the receipt if you have one, and say what looked wrong. Pharmacies have a route into the national medicines agency for exactly this and the agency will want the pack, not a description. If it arrived by post from a seller you found online, the same applies with more urgency, and the honest expectation is that a genuinely illegal seller will not help you — see buying medicine online for the check that prevents this in the first place.

The limit of the system

The safety features exist only inside the legal supply chain. A pack bought from an unregistered website was never in a national repository, so there is nothing to verify against and a printed code proves nothing — codes can be copied, which is why a duplicate raises an alert only when the legitimate pack passes through a real pharmacy. The system also does not extend to most non-prescription packs, which are outside its scope. What it does deliver is a strong guarantee about the specific thing most people worry about: the prescription pack handed over the counter in an EU or EEA pharmacy has been verified, individually, at the moment it was dispensed.

Источники:Directive 2011/62/EU — the falsified medicines directive · Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2016/161 — safety features on medicine packs · European Medicines Verification Organisation · European Medicines Agency· проверено2026-09-08

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