Argentina operates a national pharmaceutical traceability program managed by Administración Nacional de Medicamentos, Alimentos y Tecnología Médica (ANMAT).
The system is called the National Medicines Traceability System (Sistema Nacional de Trazabilidad de Medicamentos – SNT) and tracks medicines from manufacturer or importer through distribution to dispensing. The objective is to prevent counterfeit medicines and allow regulators to monitor product movement in real time across the supply chain.
All supply chain participants including manufacturers, importers, distributors, logistics operators, pharmacies, and hospitals must report traceability events to ANMAT’s central database.
Unlike many modern systems, Argentina’s program focuses on event reporting rather than full hierarchical aggregation, but serialized identifiers must still be maintained across distribution activities.
Labelling Requirements
Every saleable pharmaceutical pack included in the traceability program must carry a unique serialized identifier compliant with GS1 standards.
Typical barcode structure:
Data carrier
GS1-128 or GS1 DataMatrix (commonly used today)
Required data elements
GTIN (product identifier)
Serial Number (unique per unit)
Batch / Lot Number
Expiry Date
The serialized code must follow GS1 application identifiers such as:
(01) GTIN
(21) Serial Number
Serial numbers may contain up to 20 alphanumeric characters depending on implementation.
Human readable information must match the encoded data.