German pharmacists' body ABDA collaborates with Aegate to evaluate anti-counterfeiting medicines system

UK-based Aegate, in conjunction with the Federal Union of German Associations of Pharmacists (ABDA), has commenced a collaborative program to evaluate the impact and benefits of an authentication system in Germany. In addition, Aegate has presented the program to the drug industry group Bundesverband der Pharmazeutischen Industrie (BPI), and has discussed this in detail with BPI members.

Aegate's service, which is already fully operational in Belgium, Greece and Italy, enables individual medicinal packs to be authenticated by the pharmacist before dispensing, confirming items are in date, not recalled or potentially counterfeit. The system also provides the latest drug safety information to pharmacists whilst dispensing, greatly empowering the role of the pharmacist.

The flexibility of Aegate's system enabled some key criteria to be fulfilled; the ABDA and the BPI required this authentication program to co-exist with the current reimbursement framework that is in place for Germany; they wished to be able to evaluate a 2D Data-matrix serialization technology and also needed a simple deployment for pharmacists.