A Laser Focus on Pharmaceutical Security

PharmaManufacturing.com
08/10/2005

By Gregg Carlstrom, Contributor

Last month, Microtrace (www.microtracesolutions.com) announced plans to collaborate with Photoscribe Technologies (www.photoscribetech.com) on a new track-and-trace system. Microtrace, headquartered in Minneapolis, is best known for its Microtaggant anti-counterfeiting technology. The company produces tags as small as 20 microns that can be marked with a unique identifier. New York-based Photoscribe develops lasers; their systems can make covert marks, unreadable to the human eye, down to about 30 microns.

Combined, the two companies’ technology will allow for more specialized security applications, according to Microtrace vice president Brian Brogger. The Photoscribe laser systems can mark a variety of identifiers on microtaggants: serial numbers, bar codes, even photo images. This will allow companies to mark their products with unique identifiers that are almost impossible to reproduce or counterfeit. According to a press release from the company, the microscopic bar codes can also be encrypted to further increase security.

Brogger believes the new technology could have special implications for the pharmaceutical industry. Counterfeiting is becoming a bigger problem for drug companies, hence the proliferation of security systems like RFID. Brogger believes the new Microtrace-Photoscribe partnership will offer another layer of security.

“The industry is losing tens of billions of dollars annually to counterfeiting, not to mention the public safety risk posed by counterfeits,” he noted. “The Microtaggant technology may be utilized by the pharmaceutical industry a number of different ways including incorporation within the plastic bottles and caps, shrink sleeves, blister packs or incorporated into inks and printed on pharmaceutical labels.”

Microtrace says it will be easy for companies to integrate their technologies, and Photoscribe’s, into a supply chain. Brogger says his company delivers a variety of tag formats for easy integration. These include:

• Plastic resins: supplied in master batch quantities, for letdown at pre-determined rates;
  
  
• Laminate films: the unique identifier can be extruded directly in the film, coated in the PSA layer or delivered as coded transfer tape for application to films;
  
  
• Adhesives: microtaggant particles are randomly distributed throughout natural, clear, pigmented and hot-melt adhesives;
  
  
• Printing inks and papers.

Brogger also said the Photoscribe laser systems won’t be difficult to incorporate into existing supply chains.