The first global system to fight pharmaceutical counterfeiting and fraud is to be commercialised by Aegate, a company spun out of PA Consulting.
The system stops pharmacists dispensing fake drugs, sales of which are estimated by the World Health Organization to be worth $30bn a year. It also detects products that have passed their expiry date, been recalled for safety reasons or been diverted illegally from another market.
PA - a UK-based management and technology consultancy owned by its 3,000 employees - is investing £30m ($51m) in Aegate. Ian Rhodes, who set up the company for PA, said discussions about further funding rounds were under way with financial institutions.
Gary Noon, a pharmaceutical industry veteran, has been appointed as Aegate's chief executive. "This will become a big enterprise quite quickly," he said.The longer-term aim is for Aegate to become an independent quoted company through an initial public offering.
Aegate's system is based on 'authentication at the point of dispensing'. The pharmacist has a scanner that reads the bar-code or radio-frequency identification on the drug package. This reading is transmitted to the manufacturer's secure database to be authenticated or rejected within a second or so.
The system will be rolled out first in Britain, where it underwent a successful pilot trial in 44 pharmacies early this year. "All the pharmacists liked it because it could do a lot more for them than just detect counterfeit medicines, and many of them asked to keep their scanners after the trial finished," said Mr Noon.
Aegate will also introduce the system in the US and Belgium during 2006.
