PharmaSecure signs first customer for SMS authentication system

Indian company PharmaSecure has signed up the first customer for its text message-based system for authenticating pharmaceutical products after a successful pilot earlier this year.

The company's system takes the form of a nine-digit alphanumeric code which can be printed directly onto the blister pack, medicine bottle or vial, or indeed onto a product's label.

Consumers can verify the code - and by extension make sure the drug they have purchased is not counterfeit or expired - by texting it to a specified telephone number using their mobile phone.

PharmaSecure trialled the platform in collaboration with Hyderabad-based drugmaker MSN Laboratories, according to the company's sales director, Kishore Kar.

The pilot involved two products, an antibiotic and a multivitamin, and was initially carried out in two states. After two months the scheme then rolled out across India and, on the strength of the results, converted to PharmaSecure's first commercial order for the system in August.

"The deal initially covers the first two products, but includes provisions to expand the coverage to up to five of MSN's products," Kar told SecuringPharma.com, adding that additional trials are currently ongoing with other manufacturers.

The technology has been developed as a modular system, he said. In its first incarnation, the intention is to provide a simple 'yes or no' authentication of a code. The ultimate intention, however, is to use the system to provide data on medicine usage for manufacturers as a second tier, while a third module will provide a communication conduit between the manufacturer and the consumer.

"We are currently working with a multinational which wants to make use of the communication module in the first instance, even before they want to employ the authentication module at the large scale," he said. The aim of that project is to use the communication channel to help patients manage a chronic illness.

Kar also noted that the system is hugely scalable, as it can be integrated into the pharmaceutical manufacturing process via online printing systems.

"Right now we're working with companies whose monthly production volumes are 3m to 4m units. It is not feasible to use a label-based solution in this scenario" he said.

Looking at the history of the firm, Kar said PharmaSecure was originally set up back in 2007 with the specific aim of developing a medicines authentication system which could be cost-effective and scalable for emerging markets, and spent the period between 2007 and 2008 carrying out market research and evaluating various technological platforms.

A key objective was to find something which could work effectively in rural areas as well as urban and semi-urban areas, and in 2008 the firm plumped for a mobile phone-based approach as a workable, cost-effective and scalable solution for the Indian market.

In India more than 55 per cent of the population have a mobile phone, and it is the fastest-growing market for mobile phones in the world. PharmaSecure has signed deals with two of India's main SMS aggregators - ValueFirst and Unicel Tech - to handle the SMS messages and the link with its verification servers in the USA.

Kar said the underlying technology for its platform came out of Dartmouth College in the USA - the same source for the technology at the heart of SMS-based verification systems in development in Africa by Sproxil and mPedigree - although there is no commercial link between the companies.

India's counterfeit problem

The scale of medicines counterfeiting in India remains something of a controversial topic. An Indian government sampling study found a rate of 0.04 per cent, but has been criticised for not providing a true representation of the domestic marketplace.

"We tend to go by the percentages quoted by pharmaceutical manufacturers, which tend to give figures much higher than the government figure, at least for the brands they are interested in protecting," said Kar.

"The rates of counterfeiting are clearly different for different products. Anecdotally we hear the figure can be as high as 10 per cent in some cases," he added.

Meanwhile, PharmaSecure does not rule out expanding the business into other geographies - it has received interest from companies in Southeast Asia, Latin America and Africa according to Kar - and may even look at sectors outside pharmaceuticals in the future.


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