Aegate News

Aegate Reaches Two Million Authentication Landmark

Europe's only fully operational drug authentication service has more than 320 million individual drug packs ready to be authenticated

Aegate, Belgium, 29 June, 2009: As the European Commission seeks to stem the flow of counterfeit drugs that could reach consumers, patient safety communications company Aegate today announced it has already authenticated more than two million drug packs in pharmacies across Belgium and Greece. Aegate also confirmed that it has more than 320 million individual drug packs in its database, highlighting that medicine producers are taking action.

Developed in 2006 after pilots in Europe and the USA, Aegate's full scale authentication service has been implemented in Belgium and Greece and is currently being installed in Italy. In collaboration with each pharmacy association and local pharmacy software providers, Aegate has installed its patient safety communications system in 23 different pharmacy software systems, representing 70-80 per cent coverage of each country's pharmacies. Of the items authenticated each month, Aegate has observed that on average 0.61 per cent of individual drug packs are identified as substandard, meaning they had expired, been recalled or were suspicious, and were therefore unsuitable to dispense to the patient.

"As more Pharmaceutical and Generics companies sign up for Aegate's authentication service, the number of drugs protected by the Aegate system will continue to rise, making it increasingly difficult for counterfeiters to falsify packets of drugs. This combined with the European Commission's commitment to a legislative directive, are fundamental developments in the fight against counterfeit drugs," said Gary Noon, CEO, Aegate. "According to the World Health Organisation, between five and ten per cent of the world's drug market is counterfeit, costing the industry up to $63billion per annum - enough to create significant 'false competition' against genuine medicines."

Based on the principle of adding a unique serialisation or 'passport' number to every pack of medicine, Aegate enables pharmacists and manufacturers of pharmaceutical products to verify the authenticity of each item before dispensing to the patient. Authentication takes place in real-time using the pharmacist's existing barcode readers at the point of dispense. This allows pharmacists to scan every pack of medicine dispensed and identifies any packets with the same unique barcode. Suspicious items, recalls or expired products trigger an immediate alert that informs the pharmacist and the relevant manufacturer.

"The effectiveness of an authentication system is its speed of communications and Pan-European coverage" comments Noon. "As more countries add a requirement for serialisation we will increasingly be able to protect products that are transferred between countries; information reaches the pharmacist in real-time, therefore when a recall occurs we are often first to reach the pharmacist, wherever the product is located, making it a very efficient system".

"Aegate has shown that a truly effective solution is one that allows for authentication of medicines at the last point before they reach the consumer."