More and more governments are getting behind the GS1 standard. Take Canada for example. Here, from just two days ago, is a news item about a GS1 education initiative being sponsored by the Canadian government:
GS1 Canada has launched a new education initiative, the GS1 Knowledge Center, to educate Canadian businesses… about how they can become more competitive by employing technology based on GS1 and Electronic Product Code (EPC) standards… The courses are offered with the financial support of the Ontario government and are free to all Canadian companies.
The implication of this is that medical device and products manufacturers must now go beyond meeting their own product identification preferences and those of their channel partners and others in their supply chain. As GS1 adoption continues to gain global acceptance, all of the product indentification sophistication in the world isn’t going to matter if your product arrives on the shores of a foreign country without a standard set of identifiers supported, funded, encouraged, preferred… or most likely mandated… by the government of that country.
Filed under: GS1
