Cell phones with a custom client and a complementary server can help third-world countries fight the flood of counterfeit or expired drugs.
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Researchers from New York University have devised the Epothecary system that regulatory bodies in each country could implement to make it harder to introduce phony drugs into legal pharmaceutical distribution networks. They presented their work at the recent Sigcomm conference in Barcelona.
The system can give patients a reasonable assurance that the drugs they buy are authentic by recording and verifying all transactions as shipments pass from party to party and from manufacturer to consumer. The same system can be used to figure out where counterfeit drugs entered the supply chain.
Epothecary software is installed on cell phones that are distributed by regulatory bodies to all the parties that might legitimately engage in transactions involving the pharmaceuticals.
When a transaction starts, participants fire up Epothecary on their phones and authenticate to the Epothecary server via Short Message Service (SMS). Then they scan their personal ID, the ID of the person they are transacting with and the ID tags on the merchandise and send it to the server via SMS. If the phone is GPS-enabled, it will also send its location. As an alternative merchants can scan bar codes using the phone's camera rather than entering the digits manually via SMS.
If IDs match against the list of authorized users of the phones involved, the server sends data about tags for the items being sold. This includes the tags for smaller units packaged within larger units, such as all IDs for crates on a given pallet. The server could also send a description of the people whose IDs were sent in, such as age, height and gender.
If all the data supplied checks out, the transaction proceeds and the server records that the particular shipment of pharmaceuticals has moved one step further along the chain. If it doesn't check out, no transaction occurs until further investigation.
The system is designed for the developing world where suppliers ship to both distributors and retailers that freely trade among themselves as well as to users. In the developed world, the supply chain is much more direct, with the manufacturer supplying to retailers and distributors that don't trade among themselves.
The researchers say Epothecary isn't airtight but it presents significant barriers to those who want to scam the system.