Research: Preventing prescription drug counterfeiting

Research summary

• 2017 to 2020

This knowledge transfer partnership with information security specialists Kindus addressed prescription drug counterfeiting in medical supply chains.

According to the United Nations, 500,000 people die from malaria and 70,000 from child pneumonia due to fake medicines each year. These medicines can be disguised as authentic, but may contain ingredients that are toxic or in the wrong dosage.

Alongside Kindus, we created Serialogical - a joint enterprise that designs and develops serialisation software for pharmaceutical companies.

Our partnership developed an advanced track-and-trace system that combines cryptographic, blockchain and internet of things (IoT) technologies. It can:

• authenticate legitimate supply chain members

• verify the source of a product

• apply data integrity checks to prevent unauthorised duplication or manipulation of a product’s description

The solution is the first to present a blockchain application method to IoT, and uses new approaches to provide cryptographic keys to products during manufacturing. It moves beyond the simple tracking and tracing of finished consumer products to monitoring raw materials, semi-finished products, and other supply chain sections to provide immutable verification.

To prevent fake or sub-standard medicines in the supply chain, pharmaceutical wholesalers must comply with the Falsified Medicines Directive (FMD).

In 2018, in response to warnings that around 1,500 UK companies were failing to comply with the FMD, Serialogical made its basic system free, and now has more than 170 corporate UK subscribers.