Epothecary: Cost-effective drug pedigree tracking and authentication using mobile phones

Michael Paik, Jay Chen, Lakshminarayanan Subramanian

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

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 languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationSIGCOMM 2009 - Proceedings of the 2009 SIGCOMM Conference and Co-Located Workshops, MobiHeld 2009
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery, Inc
Pages13-18
Number of pages6
ISBN (Electronic)9781605584447
DOIs
StatePublished - Aug 17 2009
Event1st ACM Workshop on Networking, Systems, and Applications for Mobile Handhelds, MobiHeld 2009 - Barcelona, Spain
Duration: Aug 17 2009 → …

Publication series

NameSIGCOMM 2009 - Proceedings of the 2009 SIGCOMM Conference and Co-Located Workshops, MobiHeld 2009

Other

Other1st ACM Workshop on Networking, Systems, and Applications for Mobile Handhelds, MobiHeld 2009
Country/TerritorySpain
CityBarcelona
Period8/17/09 → …

Keywords

  • Barcode
  • Counterfeit
  • Pedigree
  • SMS
  • Track & trace

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Computer Networks and Communications
  • Computer Science Applications
  • Hardware and Architecture

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