In addition to the benefits of preventing the access of falsified medicines to the supply chain and minimising the risk of these products being supplied to patients there are other potential long term benefits of introducing FMD, including:

• Providing an ideal opportunity to review dispensing processes and introduce changes to optimise efficiency
• Improved accuracy checking where an integrated FMD system compares the prescribed item against the item scanned. This could reduce the number of selection errors especially the look-alike sound-alike (LASA) errors
• Date checking of all items prior to supply to the patient. This will reinforce existing date checking processes within the pharmacy, and the system could be configured to alert pharmacy teams to short dated stock
• Support the management of stock recalls, potentially at patient level where the FMD system links the Unique Identifier (see “changes to medicine packaging” later in this module for more information) of the product supplied to an individual patient’s PMR
• Improved management of stock within the pharmacy.