Counterfeit Management Solutions

A random survey by the National Quality Control Laboratories and the Pharmacy and Poisons Board found the almost 30% of drugs in Africa are counterfeit. "Some of the drugs are no more than just chalk or water being marketed as competent pharmaceutical products." According to figures from the Kenyan Association of Pharmaceutical Industry, counterfeit pharmaceutical products account for approximately $130 million annually in sales in the country.

According to a WHO press release of March 2007, the organization endorses embracing new technologies to help in containing counterfeiting. Different approaches, ranging from the simple to the more complex, are available or in development.  Overt verification tools, including holograms or colour-shift inks, are cheap but relatively easily copied.  Covert tools, such as invisible printing and digital watermarks, are more expensive and require special devices to check.

Forensic technology, essentially chemical or biological tags built into medicines' packaging, are even more secure against copying but significantly more costly and provide no visible reassurance to customers.  Serialization or track/trace systems, using technologies such as bar codes and radio frequency identification (RFID), help provide authentication by allowing a medicine to be tracked through the supply chain. 

Our approach to counterfeit is to deploy applications that support simple unique identification registry of trade units, tracing, tracking and authentification techniques.

Our Counterfeit Management Solution supports the following:

• Unique identification of trade units, logistic units, locations, and assets.
• Capturing and recording traceability data with bar codes or RFID.
• Links management linking in-bound materials through changes to new out-bound traceable items.- online.
• Data communication sharing product and traceability data between trading partners.- Online

TraceSoft appreciates that any technology intervention needs to be combined with other measures including tough legislation and regulations against counterfeiting, rigorous enforcement, stiffer penalties, and diligent surveillance on the part of the authorities and healthcare providers.