If you read here often enough you know what I have to say about recalls and how drug, device companies and the FDA should work together to solve the notification solution.  They are not going away and it’s not that we are making bad drugs today compared to the past, but we can find discrepancies and problems much better than we used to.  This is not excusing the issues but the situation is out of hand and we have luddites not doing anything for the consumer on this issue. This weekend I was quote in the Milwaukee Journal on this topic.  image

Recalled Wipes From Triad Still Out There in Consumer Medicine Cabinets and Possibly At Some Retail Locations-Manufacturers and FDA Need To Do A Better Job-Bar Codes

“It would take health care workers only a moment to scan something, such as a box of disposable alcohol pads, to determine whether it's on a national recall list, according to Barbara Duck, a California-based medical bar code advocate who has written medical records software for doctors.

They could even use their smartphones for the task - but only if the recall information were readily available and bar codes were programmed to display it. Now, the technology is used more for inventory control and sales purposes than to send out recall alerts.

"I can take my smartphone to a Best Buy store, scan something like a Canon imageprinter, and it tells me everything about it," Duck said . "But when it comes to a product recall that might save my life, I can't get anything."

She believes that hospitals have missed product recalls when a simple bar code could have alerted them to the information.

"One company found that even after a medical device with a potentially dangerous flaw was pulled from the market, doctors at more than 40 hospitals implanted it in at least 50 patients," Duck said.

Finding information on recall notices on the FDA website can be difficult.

"Users may review hundreds of serial numbers and/or lot numbers published by the FDA and companies," Duck said. "Then they have to manually compare the information on a product label."

This is hot stuff and lazy and luddite companies at hand.

At hand was the discussion of the huge Triad recall, which is just as bad as Johnson and Johnson and maybe this is why we see the bar codes on their Baby Wipes now.  It has product information but in case of a recall they could be reprogrammed immediately to give recall information.  This has been a 2 year campaign calling on deaf ears all the way around, and it’s very doable.  Both J and J and Triad had their factories closed for goodness sakes and at J and J they can’t seem to treat their pallets outside so the drug stink, I saw that for years when I was in logistics sales, a low tech solution needed there to avoid those recalls. 

Yes I have beat J and J over the head too with this idea in more ways than one. 

Johnson and Johnson Puts Microsoft Tag Bar Codes on Baby Wipes But Can’t Do the Same to Give Consumers the Chance to Find Their FDA Recalls - BarCode Baby Steps?

If you read the full report consumer sales were flat, and we don’t trust J and J like we used to, so get the recall situation fix in hand and be the comeback kid.  BD 

Johnson & Johnson posted a 20 percent decline in second-quarter profit on Tuesday, hurt by product recalls, flat sales in the United States and costs related to litigation and restructuring.

Johnson & Johnson executives said they were making progress on fixing manufacturing problems that resulted in several recalls and had numerous new drugs, medical devices and toiletries hitting the market or coming soon.

The company said it earned $2.78 billion, or $1 a share, down from $3.45 billion, or $1.23 a share, a year earlier. Revenue rose 8.3 percent, to $16.6 billion, from $15.33 billion a year ago.

Revenue was flat in the United States; consumer health product sales were down 8.5 percent because recalled products remained off store shelves.

Johnson & Johnson Hurt by Recalls in Second Quarter - NYTimes.com

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