Cope with pharmaceutical counterfeiting with the following checklist

We live in an age where the highest and all pervasive motive behind most actions is mercenary. Most of us are driven by financial profits and it seems no big surprise that the pharmaceutical industry is also a culprit in such an age. Counterfeiting in the medical industry has become a commonplace sight, duping people into paying more money in exchange of lower-quality medicines. It is a common crime but equally disheartening because exploiting people in a field like medicine stands for lack of humanity today. A poor regulation of rules, many intermediaries, and low awareness are all factors which add up to the incidence of counterfeiting.

This false representation of a medical product’s identity compels the consumer to compromise with their brand loyalty due to the lack of trust because this counterfeiting seems almost real. The Pharma companies should use one or all of the following measures, which are effective anti counterfeiting methods, to ensure the safety of customers and avoid this unwanted consequences:

• Using Hologram: There are numerous companies who are using the holograms on their products to differentiate them from others and preserve their originality which certainly avoids the risk of counterfeiting.

• Pedigree: It is a document or an E-file which is a part of tracking and tracing technology to tackle with anti counterfeiting. In this strategy, pedigree records all the information of distribution of drugs & medicines which are being dispatched from the manufacturer to the end party who verify the whole consignment thoroughly using that pedigree.

• Data Carriers: It is a graphical system which is used to transmit the information related with the product in digital but human readable format which can either be 2D/ linear barcodes or RFID tags.

• GTIN: Global trade item number is a unique identification number which is not only digital but also ensures the guidelines being followed as per GS1 allocation rules for the trade products and services.

Apart from the aforementioned anti counterfeiting methods, there are others which are being followed in many countries, like Epothecary is that mobile based authentication system which recently has been proposed in India. Taking various measures to cope with counterfeiting of drugs and medicines is not enough to eradicate it from the world, educating the masses regarding this problem will contribute in saving the pharmaceutical industry.