Mobile Phone Tech Goes Global

Mobile phone based anti-counterfeiting technology initiatives have been announced in Ghana, Nigeria and India.

Mobile phone based anti-counterfeiting technology initiatives have been announced in Ghana, Nigeria and India.

In India, a New Delhi based start-up company, PharmaSecure has made its first deal with a major Indian drug manufacturer, Unichem Laboratories, to print random code on approximately 70 million pill packets. These codes can texted by customers to a phone number connected to a pharmaceutical database, where they will be cross-referenced and if a duplicate is identified, the customer is instantly warned, reports the Christian Science Monitor.

“There are hundreds of thousands of people dying, and there’s something I can do about this. It felt like I didn’t really have a choice to just walk away without at least investigating it and seeing if we could do something, seeing if it would be possible to build this,” says Nathan Sigworth, who founded PharmaSecure after graduating in 2007 from Dartmouth College and moving to India, reports CSM.

In Nigeria and Ghana, HP and mPedigree Network have developed scratch codes that are being put on 500,000 medicine bottles and pill packets manufactured by May & Baker Nigeria and the KAMA Group of Ghana, reports Business Wire. Similar to PharmaSecure’s method, consumers can text the code to a pharmaceutical database interface which will reveal the drug’s authenticity.

May & Baker has already begun supplying Nigerian pharmacists with coded anti-malarial , anti-amoebicide and analgesic medication.

“Counterfeit pharmaceuticals are a big problem for developing nations, particularly in Africa. It is important that we developed an African solution to an African problem, using the resources and technologies that are widely available and easy to implement,” said mPedigree Network ‘s founder, Bright Simons. “It’s absolutely imperative that people can trust the authenticity of the drugs they are consuming, and this system will give them an easy and effective way of doing so.”