According to research firm Havoscope Black Markets, counterfeiting pharmaceutical drugs is the number one black market activity globally, costing the industry $200 billion annually.

Argentinean pharmaceutical company Laboratorios Gador, who supplies medications to nearly 2.5 million patients each month through its distribution network, recently completed an RFID system pilot to evaluate the technology’s ability to track and trace pharmaceutical drugs at the item, pack and pallet level.

The test was conducted by Telectrónica, Impinj, Zebra Technologies and UPM RFID and was successful in demonstrating the technology’s ability to identify, track and secure high value products that are subject to counterfeiting, diversion and theft.

Telectrónica designed a EPC global ultra-high frequency Gen 2 RFID system to identify individual items and accurately associate multi-item packs to pallets. The system was comprised of Speedway Revolution readers, reader antennas and bulk encoding software from Impinj, Trap RFID inlays from UPM RFID, RFID printers from Zebra Technologies, as well as traceability software from Telectrónica.

If fully implemented, the system would help Laboratorios Gador increase inventory availability and delivery accuracy, while enhancing patient safety and confidence in authenticated goods.

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