Costs and benefits
A presentation by Professor Steven Simoens of Belgium's Katholieke Universiteit Leuven testified to both the cost-benefit advantages of an authentication system and its effectiveness. A 'mystery shopper' audit in a sample of Belgian community pharmacies using the system found it was 100% reliable, Professor Simoens reported.
Moreover, a cost-benefit analysis of a hypothetical market, in which five pharmacy software providers covered 10,000 pharmacies dispensing 400 million drug packs a year, concluded that the authentication system would be cost-neutral in a scenario where just 0.47% of products were identified as recalled, expired or suspicious.
Commenting on actual experiences in Belgium Dirk Broeckx explained "There are "real" costs associated with an authentication system, industry has to invest in creating/printing the barcodes and data-handling, pharmacists in scanners, software and internet access. But these costs were "completely absorbed" into the normal pricing structure for medicines in Belgium, Broeckx said. And they are offset by added value in the form of improved pharmaceutical care and an operational defence against counterfeiting".
What Aegate offers is a "highly robust" system designed to tackle the fundamentals without incurring prohibitive costs, Noon told the meeting. That means having sufficient barriers in place to prevent copies from turning up elsewhere in the system and an efficient process for recalling any suspect products.