Conference Attendees Share Concerns About Counterfeits

This month, XStream Systems’ Sales Team had the opportunity to discuss counterfeiting issues with pharmaceutical executives from pharmacy providers, manufacturers and pharmaceutical wholesalers at two industry conferences.

In an effort to ascertain industry thought leaders viewpoint on risk liability and current available anti-counterfeiting technologies, a voluntary survey was conducted. Though the survey was conducted on a relatively small statistical sampling, it represents an excellent cross section and a diverse variety of pharmacy experts from national entities, regional players, large corporations and small entrepreneurs.

The following are specific excerpts from the surveys:

• 2/3 of respondents consider the greatest vulnerability of the U.S. pharmaceutical supply chain is with pharmaceuticals from foreign countries, internet sales and loosely regulated suppliers.



• Nearly 75% of distributors and pharmacy providers who responded use some process of pharmaceutical supply security including pedigree tracking, sensor based technologies (RFID, barcodes, etc.), visual inspection, weight inspections and materials analysis but their methods are not uniform. All respondents who do use some procedure ultimately use a variety of processes because collectively they seem uncertain that the methods they have in place can properly protect their inventories from fraudulent or counterfeit products.



• 75% of all respondents were aware of drug identification and authentication system technology but 50% were not familiar with a specific technology or a particular solution.



• 75% of respondents are concerned about counterfeit drugs impacting medication safety to their distributors/providers/patients.

• 75% of respondents are concerned over their financial liability of counterfeit drugs within their inventories.



• 75% of respondents are concerned about their professional reputation being ruined if they were to have counterfeit pharmaceutical in their inventories.

• 2/3 of respondents expressed concern over the issue of counterfeit drugs within the supply chain.



• 75% of the respondents were concerned that their current methods and processes for supply security were not enough to protect their inventories.



• 50% of respondents fear a catastrophic counterfeit event within the U.S. pharmaceutical supply chain in 2009.

A complete report will available shortly on XStream Systems' website at http://www.xstreamsystems.net/