Bangalore, May 12, 2010: The US-based company, Cognex Corporation designs, develops, manufactures and markets machine vision sensors and systems. Cognex's In-Sight Track & Trace delivers a ready-to-deploy data capture and verification solution designed to help pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers achieve unit-level product traceability.

In an interview with BioSpectrum, Mr Didier Lacroix, Senior Vice President, International Sales and Services, Cognex Corporation, shares his views on the advantages of barcodes in pharma industry, and the range of products launched by Cognex for life sciences industry.

What are the advantages of barcoding for Indian pharma companies?

Increasing global regulations on healthcare products have urged many global pharma manufacturers to implement serialized packaging in support of full 'track and trace' requirements. The latest generation of smart camera vision systems will help to achieve traceabilities like ID code reading, text verification, mark quality assessment, and label inspection in a cost effective manner.

The applications of barcoding in the pharma industry are 1D barcode or 2D Data Matrix that entails production detail such as date/lot code, expiration and serial number; and .E-Pedigree traceability. These applications seek item-level serialization on every bottle, carton or blister pack and Data Matrix has been adopted as standard. Serialized items are associated with larger case and pallet lots in a parent child relationship.

What are the major products of Cognex that are widely used in pharma industry?

Cognex's products including In-Sight vision systems, DataMan ID Readers and Verifiers, PC Vision software and Checker Vision Sensor offer different capabilities to solve specific gauging, inspection, guidance and identification problems.

The company is committed to meeting the automation needs of pharma and medical devices sectors by developing solutions to common identification and inspection problems. The newly launched In-Sight Track and Trace delivers a ready-to-deploy data capture and verification solution designed to help the sector to achieve unit-level product traceability. The track and trace solutions are becoming a high priority throughout the healthcare industry as a means of preventing counterfeiting.

Cognex has also introduced introduced two new 1D barcode readers to its DataMan line of industrial ID Readers. The DataMan 100 QL and DataMan 200 QL fixed mount readers offer best 1D barcode reading performance. The new readers offer the additional benefit of being easily field-upgraded to add 2D Data Matrix and QR code reading capability if application needs change in future.

Has the Indian pharma industry fully adapted to barcoding?

As pharmaceutical manufacturers confront increased margin pressure in the coming years, they will look for new ways to lower their costs to install and maintain production lines. Having the option to choose smart camera vision systems instead of being locked into PC-based vision systems at the machine level can be a tremendous advantage that often results in a solution that is less expensive to install, less complex to validate, and less costly to maintain.

What are the plans of Cognex Corporation for the Indian pharma market?

Cognex seeks to strengthen the pharma market in India that is the fourth largest pharma market in the Asia Pacific region, behind Japan, China and South Korea. Indian pharma market is forecasted to reach $44.99 billion by 2018, with a CAGR of 12.20 percent. India is an exciting market with huge potential for Cognex. The company will give more focus to Indian market in near future.

Mr Didier Lacroix is the Senior VP, International Sales & Services, Cognex Corporation, US