With the European Union’s Falsified Medicines Directive (EU FMD) coming into effect on 9 February 2019, rather than simply focusing on the negatives — the extra time and costs required to achieve compliance — it’s important to also recognise that there will be benefits.

Under the FMD, every newly manufactured stock item will be encoded with a batch number and expiry date. This is data pharmacists lacked (and would have benefited from) for many years. It will help to make routine stock control and the administration of product recalls much more efficient, eliminating the need for manual processes.