LONDON – After years in the planning, a pan-European medicines authentication system, tracking drugs from production line to point of dispensing, went live last weekend. The European Medicines Verification System (EMVS) puts into effect the EU's falsified medicines directive, which was published in 2011. Between 10 billion and 14 billion packs of medicines moving around the EU each year will now have tamper-evident packaging and a unique identifier in a 2D barcode, that manufacturers will upload into EMVS, allowing individual packs to be tracked.