Fake drugs ‘cost industry $100m’

Europe and the US are losing $50m to $100m annually on counterfeit drugs, a seminar in Cork was told yesterday.

Ian Brodie expert in Global Life Sciences at Cap Gemini says that RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) can significantly reduce this figure.

RFID is a track and trace technology that can uniquely identify each product electronically but it is one step up from barcoding. It can not only tell the product type but the unique identity of the products, allowing tracking of the date it was produced.