The incidence of fake, expired, adulterated, mislabelled or otherwise unauthorized medicinal products reaching the market place is on the increase. The pharmaceutical industry itself is also at major risk.

Today, it loses sales revenue to counterfeiters and product diverters. If this activity gets out of control and major tragedies happen, which it can, the resulting product recalls, brand damage and when stock price falls this will cause major financial impact at a time when drug company profits are already under extreme pressure.

Within the pharmaceutical industry the use and application is driven by Traceability and the fight against counterfeiting. Also the need to record/read expiry/use by dates at the point of saleor distribution, and where the product is subject to a quality driven recall program. The Data Matrix is a 2D symbol capable of storing a large amount of information within almost any physical size. It has wide adoption including the aerospace, automotive and of course medical/pharmaceutical industries.