• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Scanner Will Fight $6bn Counterfeit Medicines Market

Posted on: Tuesday, 27 September 2005, 12:00 CDT

By Tracey Boles, The Business, London

Sep. 25--Innovative equipment which will help crack down on the counterfeit medicines costing the global pharmaceutical industry $6bn (£3.3bn, E5bn) to $8bn a year is to be piloted this week by Imperial College, London, and a big pharmaceutical packager.

The state-of-the-art laser scanner identifies frauds from the unique "fingerprint" of paper and other materials at the molecular level. The laser was invented by Russell Cowburn, Imperial College Professor of Nanotechnology.

This Monday, the technology will be deployed on the production line of the pharmaceutical packager in its first large-scale trial.

The laser surface authentication system works by sweeping across the surface of paper, cardboard or plastic and mapping all of the unique microscopic imperfections that a natural part of the materials. The scan, which serves as a fingerprint, is then stored in a computer database alongside the date and time of manufacture and the destination market.

At a later date, the material can be scanned again via a notebook-sized device costing less than $1,000, and the new fingerprint compared with the original to weed out fakes.

The technology is very accurate because it maps materials at the molecular level; the chances of two pieces of paper being alike are less than the number of atoms in the universe, Cowburn says. The fingerprints -- which do away with the need for tags such as RFID chips -- are also robust, withstanding scorching, waterlogging, crumpling and ink marks.

Cowburn said: "Paper looks plain to the naked eye but it has a mass of imperfections due to the way the fibres fall together when the pages are manufactured. They make up a mountainscape of peaks and troughs which laser light can detect."

UK company Ingenia Technology is commercialising the technology, which can also be used to detect forged birth certificates, passports and other documents. In the US, it is being looked at by the US government printing office.

Up to 7 percent of all medicines worldwide are counterfeits. The greatest number of fakes are generated in India and China. They tend to be drugs that are easily replicated, such as some painkillers.

In addition, drugs are often diverted away from their intended destinations, creating a large grey market for medicines such as anti-retro virals.

A spokeswoman for GlaxoSmithKline said: "It is a significant problem and ultimately the people who lose out are the patients. We will be working with the appropriate authorities to try and stamp counterfeiting out."

-----

To see more of The Business, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.thebusinessonline.com.

Copyright (c) 2005, The Business, London

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

For information on republishing this content, contact us at (800) 661-2511 (U.S.), (213) 237-4914 (worldwide), fax (213) 237-6515, or e-mail reprints@krtinfo.com.

GSK,

Source: Sunday Business

More News in this Category