E7-916. Agency Information Collection Activities; Submission for Office of Management and Budget Review; Comment Request; Bar Code Label Requirement for Human Drug and Biological Products

AGENCY:

Food and Drug Administration, HHS.

ACTION:

Notice.

SUMMARY:

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is announcing that a proposed collection of information has been submitted to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review and clearance under the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995.

DATES:

Fax written comments on the collection of information by February 22, 2007.

ADDRESSES:

To ensure that comments on the information collection are received, OMB recommends that written comments be faxed to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, OMB, Attn: FDA Desk Officer, FAX: [phone].

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:

Elizabeth Berbakos, Office of the Chief Information Officer (HFA-250), Food and Drug Administration, 5600 Fishers Lane, Rockville, MD 20857, 301-827-1482.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:

In compliance with 44 U.S.C. 3507, FDA has submitted the following proposed collection of information to OMB for review and clearance.

Bar Code Label Requirement for Human Drug and Biological Products—(OMB Control Number 0910-0537)—Extension

In the Federal Register of February 26, 2004 (69 FR 9120), FDA issued a new rule that required human drug product and biological product labels to have bar codes. The rule required bar codes on most human prescription drug products and on over-the-counter (OTC) drug products that are dispensed under an order and commonly used in health care facilities. The rule also required machine-readable information on blood and blood components. For human prescription drug products and OTC drug products that are dispensed under an order and commonly used in health care facilities, the bar code must contain the National Drug Code number for the product. For blood and blood components, the rule specifies the minimum contents of the machine-readable information in a format approved by the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research Director as blood centers have generally agreed upon the information to be encoded on the label. The rule is intended to help reduce the number of medication errors in hospitals and other health care settings by allowing health care professionals to use bar code scanning equipment to verify that the right drug (in the right dose and right route of administration) is being given to the right patient at the right time.

Most of the information collection burden resulting from the final rule, as calculated in table 1 of the final rule (69 FR 9120 at 9149), was a one-time burden that does not occur after the rule's compliance date of April 26, 2006. In addition, some of the information collection burden estimated in the final rule is now covered in other OMB-approved information collection packages for FDA. However, parties may continue to seek an exemption from the bar code requirement under certain, limited circumstances. Section 201.25(d) (21 CFR 201.25(d)) requires submission of a written request for an exemption and describes the contents of such requests. Based on the number of exemption requests submitted during 2004 and 2005, we estimate that approximately 2 waiver requests may be submitted annually, and that each exemption request will require 24 hours to complete. This would result in an annual reporting burden of 48 hours.

In the Federal Register of July 24, 2006 (71 FR 41817), FDA published a 60-day notice requesting public comment on the information collection provisions. No comments were received.

Table 1.—Estimated Annual Reporting Burden¹

21 CFR Section	No. of Respondents	Annual Frequency per Response	Total Annual Responses	Hours per Response	Total Hours
201.25(d)	2	1	2	24	48
Total					48
1 There are no capital costs or operating and maintenance costs associated with this collection of information.

Dated: January 16, 2007.

Jeffrey Shuren,

Assistant Commissioner for Policy.