MAN Roland system identifies pharmaceuticals

MAN Roland has announced that it has developed a simple and economical process to determine whether a given drug is genuine using a mobile phone camera.

The company said it has developed a system to counteract counterfeits of brand-name drugs and pharmaceuticals working in association with O-PUR, a project sponsored by the German Federal Ministry of Research and Technology.

Until now, said MAN Roland, drugs companies and their printed packaging suppliers, in trying to distinguish an original drug from a counterfeit product, have relied on the variety of available refining and finishing printing options to set their packages apart.

Embossing, colours, coatings, glosses and glitter help consumers to spot the difference between the original and the bogus products.

O-PUR is claimed to be able to go further than those methods.

Thanks to a two-dimensional code no larger than 3mm, each sheet of paper in a printed pack becomes distinctly identifiable, making each package unique.

This safety feature is created with no added cost as the code is printed in a single printing unit.

Codes are then documented with a camera or scanner, with an integrated high-speed digital camera planned for future press versions.

With the papers' 'fingerprints' recorded and stored in central databases, each package in a given production batch can be identified by means of its code and traced back to its origin.

For this decoding step, researchers looked for established and widely used technologies and opted for the mobile telephone.

The latest devices have integrated digital cameras as standard and so the camera function combined with special software is said to be suitable for the purposes of O-PUR, added MAN Roland.

The consumer photographs the code, the data is compared with the registered fingerprints via the internet, then the consumer receives a confirmation that the product is 'original' or receives a warning saying 'stop'.

MAN Roland said that it is not just paper that has a clearly identifiable surface structure.

Metals, plastics and high-grade natural products, such as wood or leather, also have structures that enable the product with the code to be traced.

The German press manufacturer explained that by running fingers across the paper, it becomes clear that it is not as smooth as it appears.

The paper's rough surface can be clearly seen under a microscope.

Wood fibres criss-cross each other, creating a random, unique microstructure.

Add colour through the printing process, and an effective 'fingerprint' for a given piece of paper can be created, since each fibre absorbs ink in a different way.

This is invisible to the naked eye and no two pieces of paper run or dry the same.

O-PUR is claimed to ensure the safety and traceability of original products.

Together with the Hochschule Mannheim, Fraunhofer-Institut fur Physikalische Messtechnik IPM, EINS, Epyxs, Pepperl and Fuchs, and other companies, MAN Roland has been developing the process so that it is economical to implement by manufacturers, but difficult to reproduce for counterfeiters.

The product protection it offers to consumers should be easy to recognise and verify.

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