How to stop the flow of dark web drugs

Nikhil Mandrekar
Aug 28, 2017 · 4 min read

I recently discovered my love for reporting on research projects sponsored by public funds (your taxes at work).

I will be reviewing research projects from around the world, both recently-completed and ongoing, and preparing a condensed summary (less than 5-minute read) in the hopes to bridge the gap between the-thinkers and the-doers (read: entrepreneurs) quicker than traditional channels. I hope that my thoughts and questions can spur discussions and improvements, collaborations and investments.

My core areas of interest are transportation, bioeconomy and nanotechnology. And everything else.


The Research Chronicles: #002— SAVEMED, CONPHIRMER & ACFOIL

Blockbuster drugs are under attack. Some of the prime counterfeited targets are Viagra, Aricept, Norvasc (Pfizer); Procrit (Amgen); Levitra (Bayer); & Cialis (Lilly). In fact drug manufacturers tend to down-play this problem to avoid the negative consequences from the loss of consumer confidence (while secretly trying to solve this issue). It is commonly accepted that €30B (that’s billion) is a conservative estimate for counterfeit medical material.

This research had many angles to it that it required three separate sub-projects.

The SAVEMED project ran between April 2011 and March 2014 for a total cost of €4,278,114 (co-ordinated by NANO-4-U GmbH, a German company).

The CONPHIRMER project ran between July 2011 and December 2014 for a total cost of €3,599,540 (co-ordinated by King’s College London).

The ACFOIL project ran between October 2014 and March 2015 for a total cost of €71,429 (co-ordinated by INMOLD AS, a Denmark company)

A total cost of ~€8M. Am I excited about the results?

In a nutshell, here’s what happened.

I. First, they figured out how to re-tool existing manufacturing systems inexpensively to apply security micro-structures (think barcodes or QR codes or similar) directly to the tablet (without any chemical or biological additives). That’s innovative. Because they decided to go beyond today’s packaging-only security direct to tablet-security.

II. Second, to enhance security, they developed ways to “couple” the tablet security to the package security, offering package-product security. That’s innovative too. Because now you can check that your tablet belongs to that specific package.

Apparently, it doesn’t seem too well on white pills due to the lack of contrast. Am I the only person that thinks of the color white when someone mentions pills?

III. They designed a reading device (called a “handheld pOCT”) to check the security of the pills.

The 1st scan reveals reads the security code on the blister packaging. The 2nd scan reads the data matrix on the tablets. The software checks if the codes match.

I’m sorry, but that’s not innovative. I believe we’ve reached that point in human evolution where we expect to be able to verify and track things for ourselves. Say for example, through an app on our 2.6 billion smartphones?

This device was designed for use primarily by customs authorities. I’m not a security professional but here are my thoughts on this:

  1. Only the drugs that are actually held for verification by customs authorities can go through this “security scan”. This means that all those drugs that get past customs (a growing number of buyers order drugs anonymously through direct mail) can’t be checked for authenticity.
  2. The use of a proprietary device makes this entire process centralized, at the customs office. Eventually this will lead to congestion and delays with innocent people suffering the consequences.

My questions (feel free to respond in the comments or to me):

  1. Did the project participants consider “scale” when working on the verification phase of the supply chain? (i.e. enabling millions of people to verify authenticity instead of just a few hundred customs offices?)
  2. In the interest of public awareness is there a publicly-accessible database of the most frequent “fake” drugs on the market (preferably something with a map of most-recent reportings)
  3. Did the project participants consider the use of a public blockchain to host the security information required by end-users to verify their drugs?

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Nikhil Mandrekar

Written by

Economist by training. Entrepreneur at heart. Founder of aPitchDeck.com

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