Edward Wilson Highlights Potential of Barcode Technology in Vaccine Insights

In March, Vaccine Insights featured an interview with Edward Wilson, director of JSI’s Center for Health Logistics and the Partnership for Supply Chain Management about barcode technology for vaccines in low and middle-income countries.

In this interview, “Barcode technology: a game changer for public health supply chains,” Wilson makes the case for deploying barcode technology to ensure vaccine traceability and safety, particularly for lower- and middle-income countries. Wilson notes that historically, the implementation of barcodes for vaccine management and health product management has been challenging. He highlights a lack of standardization with information and packaging, technology limitations that prevent the integration of barcode data into digital systems, and ad hoc implementation.

Despite these challenges, Wilson noted that the timing is opportune for barcode technology to help transform public health supply chains in limited-resource contexts. According to Wilson, there is “a confluence of policy, technical, political, and public health factors coupled with consumer demand…”

Now we see a concerted effort across the value chain and across product categories to incorporate and implement barcodes based on data standards – the benefits of which will be felt around the world.” Edward Wilson, Director, Center for Health Logistics.

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