Pharmaceutical Track&Trace History

Turkish Ministry of Health General Directorate of Phamaceutical and Pharmacy was assigned to the task of ensuring the drug safety by "2009/84 circular No.181 Decree on the Organization and Duties of the Ministry of Health". For this purpose, on the basis of Article 2 (d) of the said law and paragraph (c) of Article 11, on February 02, 2008, there has been an amendment on the "Packaging and Labeling Regulation for Medicinal Products for Human Use". A new identifier has been put in the name of "data matrix" instead of barcode. With these changes, any drugs, produced or imported until January 2010, must have the unique data matrix code on the packaging and has to be monitored every step of the supply chain.

The first version of the Pharmaceutical Track&Trace System software which was developed by the institution, has been released as the pilot version in selected regions. After the pilot version, with the limited transactions, it has been seen that track&trace system will work.

Although not all of the notifications have been made within the producer-warehouse-pharmacy cycle during Phase-1, drugs can be processed in the system. From medicines entry to the supply chain to patient's access, all the stages of medicine sales were monitored. Wholesalers could participate in the system optionally.

In phase 2, each transaction related to the medicine is recorded with the addition of the wholesalers to the system. With this system, every box of medicine can be recorded. With these records which include the place of the sale, date of the sale, expiration date etc., verification can be made for all the medicine.

Pharmaceutical Track&Trace System which had only the basic functions was redesigned from scratch by Tiga Information Technologies Incorporated in accordance to the international standarts for more professional approach to the problems which eliminated by the new design. New design of the track and trace system is republished with the name "Tiga Pharmaceutical Track&Trace System".

Pharmaceutical Track&Trace is now accessible via smartphones. All the citizens now can check their medicine with this mobile application. With this app Pharmaceutical Track&Trace system can fight with the illegal and counterfeit drugs and protect the health of the people with the help of the people.

Tiga Information Technologies Incorporated with the Pharmaceutical Track&Trace System was selected by the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) as one of the top five e-health projects in the world.

The first pharmaceutical track and trace system with the end-to-end application in the world has been serving successfully since 2010 in Türkiye. The Track&Trace system in Türkiye is seen as an example within the Healthcare communities in the world. The work had been done to export the system to other countries finally gave its first fruits. Saudi Arabia Pharmaceutical and Food Agency has gave the start to Tiga Information Technologies for the customized track and trace system for their country.