Tablet "fingerprinting" unveiled by TeraView to counter fake drugs

Teraherz imaging and spectroscopy products, as developed by Cambridge, UK-based specialist technology firm TeraView, could be employed to counter the threat of fake drugs, according to the firm.

Don Arnone, TeraView's chief executive, said: "every tablet has a fingerprint that is unique to the coating, the contents and potentially the manufacturer, which we can detect with our terahertz imaging technology." He added that "we can not only determine whether the drug content is as described, checking for active constituents for example, but also differentiate brand name drugs from those of other manufacturers. We can do this without needing to add bar codes to individual tablets or re-engineer tablet production, or destroy tablets during testing."

In a recent joint study by the US Food and Drug Administration and TeraView, initial results presented to a recent international analytical chemistry conference found variations in tablet thickness between genuine and fake products.