According to Henri Barthel, Director System Integrity and Global Partnerships for GS1, the organization is making available
…a non-technical document describing business opportunities and challenges related to serialization. It also includes a set of recommendations that GS1 will incorporate into its standards and guidelines development planning.
It is called the Serialization Strategy Paper.
Mr. Barthel predicts that within 10 to 15 years serialization will be common practice. He says this about its current adoption rate, including a reference to healthcare:
The unique identification of individual trade items is gaining more and more attention in an increasing number of business, commercial and consumer sectors. Many healthcare companies, for example, have already started providing serial identification of some of their products at the item level. In the consumer electronics sector, serialization of high value items is the foundation for a number of business applications. Governmental agencies and military services also often require unique item identification of critical and high value items.
You can read his recent article, courtesy of the Association for Automatic Identification and Mobility, and get access to a link to the Serialization Strategy Paper here.
GHS and Regulatory Labeling Challenges in the New Era 
