Medicines: Are paper booklets replaced by QR codes towards the end?

Quit paper in first aid kits? In any case, this is the meaning of the experiment, launched in 2024 and announced this Friday on some boxes sold in pharmacies, to which a “QR code” will first be added, with the aim of possibly eliminating paper at the same time.” future. This “dematerialization” of notifications is part of a broader “green planning” strategy for the health system, led in particular by ministers Agnès Firmin Le Baudot (territorial organization and health professions), Roland Lescure (industry) and Stanislas Guerini (public action). ).

The year-long trial will begin in the “first quarter of 2024”, will cover a “panel” of selected drugs and will be carried out simultaneously, but differentially, in hospitals and community pharmacies. At the hospital, the test will be to “immediately” remove paper notices, “as they are generally not used in pharmacies for indoor use,” they specified.

Videos, interactive sheets…

In urban pharmacies, on the other hand, paper instructions will be kept at this stage, but a QR code will be added to the box. It’s about “enriched information” online through “various media, such as videos, more readable interactive sheets.”

The experiment will be carried out by the National Agency for the Safety of Medicines (ANSM) and the General Directorate of Health. Among the drugs in question are “commonly available” molecules such as paracetamol or ibuprofen, fairly common “prescription drugs” such as antibiotics, and drugs against chronic diseases, especially cancer.

The government’s aim is to “assess patient use of the QR code” and, depending on the results, it “could move towards eliminating paper leaflets”. Various “solutions” are being considered for the future, including possibly “providing paper instructions for pharmacists” for people “having difficulty accessing digital information.” Ministers also announce “ongoing work in 2024” on a new “methodology for calculating the carbon footprint of healthcare products, particularly medicines”.

This methodology should allow for “increased consideration of environmental impacts in government procurement” and “potentially eventually in economic regulatory mechanisms” for health products. Healthcare products account for 54% of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the healthcare sector, which itself emits 8% of the nation’s GHG emissions.