How will the system work in Iceland

Those who supply medicines to the public, including pharmacies and hospitals, in Iceland will have to connect their software systems to the ICEMVO repository (via an Internet connection) to enable them to check that packs are genuine before they are supplied to patients. Pharmaceutical wholesalers will also be required to check medicines in certain situations and will also need to connect to the repository.

Manufacturers will add a barcode to each pack contain the ‘unique identifiers’ and send details of the information in the barcode to the ICEMVO database via the EU Hub. When the pharmacist or wholesaler scans the barcode on a pack, if the details are not found in ICEMVO’s database (or elsewhere in the EMVS), an alert will be generated leading to an investigation to find out if the pack is fake.

ICEMVS – Status

2019-10-30

Release 6 is scheduled to be deployed in production 2019-10-30.

Release 6

This release, which is scheduled to be deployed in production 2019-10-30, will include both functionality for release 5 and 6.

In addition to several bug fixes, the following changes are included:

  • The authentication token obtained from the Authentication API is valid for 30 minutes instead of 9 hours.
  • Introducing Azure Application Gateway and Azure API Management which provides a flexible solution for load balancing, advanced traffic routing and an infrastructure for publishing, securing and managing APIs.
  • Via API Management, a rate limit is set for the maximum number of requests that can be made from a terminal (location / equipment) within a specific period of time. This change will minimize the risk abusive use of the API and of Denial of Service (DOS) attacks. If the call limit is reached, subsequent calls will be denied and an error code (70020000) with an error message will be given in response. No new error code is created for this, so no customization in the end-user system needs to be made. The rate limits will initially be:
    • 1500 calls/5 min/IP address for the Authentication API
    • 800 calls/5 min/location (equipment) for Pack API
    • 200 calls/5 min/location (equipment) for Reporting API
  • Via Azure Application Gateway, version management of the ICEMVS API is introduced. This means that parallel versions of the ICEMVS API can exist and the requesting system determines which version to request. The current version of the API will be requested by default if no version is specified. Therefore, no change needs to be made to adapt the ICEMVS API directly in connection with the update.
  • In the current version of ICEMVS there is a configurable limit that indicates how many times a day a pharmacy / wholesaler for a location (location) may make an incorrect manual entry before an alert is generated. This limit for incorrect manual verification / deactivation per location is removed and an alert will be generated in the same way whether it is a call based on manual or scanned input.
  • NCA Reports
    • Reports intended for the Icelandic Medicines Agency for their supervision and transparency of the system
  • Open API
    • The end users and IT vendors can use Open API to get a description of what services the ICEMVS API provides and how they are requested