Information and Communication Technology in Combating Counterfeit Drugs

Pharma frauds are on the rise, counterfeit drugs are giving sleepless nights to patients, pharmaceutical companies and governments. The laws prohibiting the sales of counterfeit drugs cannot succeed without technological interventions. Several analytical techniques and tools including spectroscopy, holograms, barcoding, differentiated packing, radio frequency identification, fingerprints, hyperspectral imaging etc. have been employed over the years in combating this menace; however this challenge is becoming more sophisticated with the evolution of the World Wide Web and online pharmacies. This paper presents a review on the contribution of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) as a drug counterfeit countermeasure.