Health care supply chains are at an inflection point, readying for new traceability regulations from the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA). However, these latest challenges may best be seen as part of longer-standing movement toward improving "chain of custody" information from manufacturing to point of use. You can't get much more safety critical than "point of use" in health care, since it means a patient's mouth for pills or inside the body for implant-ables like artificial joints. That's why tracing the pedigree of these items is seen as necessary by the FDA, as well as beneficial to manufacturers who don't want counterfeits slipping into the market.
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