Abstract
Counterfeit and expired pharmaceuticals are a significant problem in the developing world, constituting up to 80% of stock on pharmacy shelves. This is due both to poor existing controls and to lack of supporting infrastructure on which to build such controls. Existing strategies to fight counterfeiting include holograms, special packaging, and paper invoice tracing, but each of these have been proven ineffectual in the face of increasingly sophisticated counterfeiting rings, which inject fake drugs into the market for profit and/or sell off genuine medications on the black market or in adjacent countries at marked up prices. This paper describes Epothecary, a system which uses built-in functionality in midlevel mobile telephones including cameras, SMS, and optionally GPS to construct a robust system for tracking and verifying the pedigrees of pharmaceutical products at every point in the distribution chain, particularly in the developing world.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | SIGCOMM 2009 - Proceedings of the 2009 SIGCOMM Conference and Co-Located Workshops, MobiHeld 2009 |
| Publisher | Association for Computing Machinery, Inc |
| Pages | 13-18 |
| Number of pages | 6 |
| ISBN (Electronic) | 9781605584447 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Aug 17 2009 |
| Event | 1st ACM Workshop on Networking, Systems, and Applications for Mobile Handhelds, MobiHeld 2009 - Barcelona, Spain Duration: Aug 17 2009 → … |
Other
| Other | 1st ACM Workshop on Networking, Systems, and Applications for Mobile Handhelds, MobiHeld 2009 |
|---|---|
| Country | Spain |
| City | Barcelona |
| Period | 8/17/09 → … |
Fingerprint
Keywords
- Barcode
- Counterfeit
- Pedigree
- SMS
- Track & trace
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Computer Networks and Communications
- Computer Science Applications
- Hardware and Architecture
Cite this
Epothecary : Cost-effective drug pedigree tracking and authentication using mobile phones. / Paik, Michael; Chen, Jay; Subramanian, Lakshminarayanan.
SIGCOMM 2009 - Proceedings of the 2009 SIGCOMM Conference and Co-Located Workshops, MobiHeld 2009. Association for Computing Machinery, Inc, 2009. p. 13-18.Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution
}
TY - GEN
T1 - Epothecary
T2 - Cost-effective drug pedigree tracking and authentication using mobile phones
AU - Paik, Michael
AU - Chen, Jay
AU - Subramanian, Lakshminarayanan
PY - 2009/8/17
Y1 - 2009/8/17
N2 - Counterfeit and expired pharmaceuticals are a significant problem in the developing world, constituting up to 80% of stock on pharmacy shelves. This is due both to poor existing controls and to lack of supporting infrastructure on which to build such controls. Existing strategies to fight counterfeiting include holograms, special packaging, and paper invoice tracing, but each of these have been proven ineffectual in the face of increasingly sophisticated counterfeiting rings, which inject fake drugs into the market for profit and/or sell off genuine medications on the black market or in adjacent countries at marked up prices. This paper describes Epothecary, a system which uses built-in functionality in midlevel mobile telephones including cameras, SMS, and optionally GPS to construct a robust system for tracking and verifying the pedigrees of pharmaceutical products at every point in the distribution chain, particularly in the developing world.
AB - Counterfeit and expired pharmaceuticals are a significant problem in the developing world, constituting up to 80% of stock on pharmacy shelves. This is due both to poor existing controls and to lack of supporting infrastructure on which to build such controls. Existing strategies to fight counterfeiting include holograms, special packaging, and paper invoice tracing, but each of these have been proven ineffectual in the face of increasingly sophisticated counterfeiting rings, which inject fake drugs into the market for profit and/or sell off genuine medications on the black market or in adjacent countries at marked up prices. This paper describes Epothecary, a system which uses built-in functionality in midlevel mobile telephones including cameras, SMS, and optionally GPS to construct a robust system for tracking and verifying the pedigrees of pharmaceutical products at every point in the distribution chain, particularly in the developing world.
KW - Barcode
KW - Counterfeit
KW - Pedigree
KW - SMS
KW - Track & trace
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U2 - 10.1145/1592606.1592610
DO - 10.1145/1592606.1592610
M3 - Conference contribution
SP - 13
EP - 18
BT - SIGCOMM 2009 - Proceedings of the 2009 SIGCOMM Conference and Co-Located Workshops, MobiHeld 2009
PB - Association for Computing Machinery, Inc
ER -