Recording of MHRA Supply Chain Webinar Available

On 13 August 2021, the Medicines & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) held a webinar "Protecting the medicines supply chain from falsified medicines". The idea behind that was to provide information and guidance around the challenges on protecting the medicines supply chain from falsified medicines and to share case studies of incidents.

The live event was attended by a large number of delegates. A link to the recording was now published in the MHRA Inspectorate blog.

Following the webinar, a number of questions were asked on the section on overseas-based call centres and home workers. Therefore, the previous related blog post "Too good to be true? How to play your part in protecting the UK medicines supply chain" was updated to address those key questions received during the webinar. 

Concerning the overseas call centres, the MHRA states that "any activities of procurement and supplying must take place on sites named on a wholesale dealer’s licence. This means that procurement and sales offices cannot be based in third countries such as India, as GDP activities for GB wholesalers must be conducted within the UK."

For homeworkers, the following rules apply: "Where a company is using its own staff based at home [...]  and if those staff are involved in activities of procuring or supplying medicinal products then that must be at a licensed premises. It then follows that the home address should be named on the wholesale dealer’s licence." During the COVID-19 pandemic, however, there is the following exception: "Provided the home working element is an interim measure and not full time, the home address would not be required to be named on a WDA."