Patiala, Oct. 19 -- Rolled out over a year ago to verify patients' identities and curb the pilferage of buprenorphine tablets, the biometric attendance system at Outpatient Opioid-Assisted Treatment (OOAT) centres in Punjab is still battling teething problems in the absence of basic technical infrastructure.

Buprenorphine is a partial opioid agonist medicine distributed at over 540 OOAT centres to treat opioid dependence among drug addicts by suppressing cravings and preventing withdrawal symptoms.

The biometric system, launched in March 2025, was intended to strengthen identity verification and ensure that medicines reached only registered patients by preventing impersonation and fake patient entries.

Under the programme, biometric ma...