Security misunderstandings in the application of RFID technology in the pharmaceutical industry

The trial of RFID technology by pharmaceutical companies is to make fake medicines available in ordinary people's medicine cabinets, but RFID technology currently has serious safety limitations.

For the past two years, every bottle of OxyContin, a global retailer of Wal-Mart or a medium-sized pharmaceutical wholesaler, HDSmith, has been tagged with a special label that is considered worldwide. A good way to fake medicine.

A very common label hides radio frequency identification (RFID) tags that allow PurduePharma, which produces this controversial painkiller, to track the trajectory of drugs throughout the supply chain – no matter how many pills are loaded into it Which bottles are inserted into the cardboard box and then transported by the conveyor belt. The goal is that dealers can scan the RFID tags on all Oswego bottles to understand the entire origin of each bottle, the “lineage”, and identify and return medicines that are not produced by Purdue.

Aaron Graham, vice president and chief security officer of PurduePharma, said: "This label is very effective and accurate. It meets our requirements from a safety perspective and does not cause problems in the drug distribution system." Infrastructure for this pilot project The investment is 20 million US dollars, and the cost of each label is between 30 cents and 50 cents.

Graham's words (along with the numbers he mentioned) sound familiar, because he has been saying this for years. But even now, he can't tell how much the system prevents someone from selling fake Oscardines. After all, Purdue has never encountered a problem with counterfeit Oswego. However, Zui’s company is facing the problem of being stolen and misappropriated by Oscar, and it is also under pressure from the government. The government has called for increased control over this addictive drug, and the media has paid far more attention to the abuse of this drug than it is legitimate.

Indeed, Graham acknowledges that the main safety advantage of Purdue's RFID system is that after the investigator scans and confiscates a bottle or a box of Oscardine, it can accurately find out where it came from. Graham said that in order to truly contain counterfeit drugs, it is necessary to concentrate the information exchange center, so that each dealer and pharmacy can check and verify the pedigree of each drug - this task is more than tracking a single delivery to one or two distribution outlets. Variety drugs are much more complicated, and Purdue is doing this complex work.

There is an urgent need to prevent counterfeit drugs from entering the legitimate supply chain. The World Health Organization believes that counterfeit drugs account for more than 10% of global drug sales, causing thousands of deaths each year. The problem is that although RFID technology was invented decades ago, although the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) began promoting the technology several years ago as a promising way to identify the authenticity of drugs, RFID is an anti-counterfeiting technology. It is still only "very hopeful", far from being confirmed.

Even if companies like Purdue continue to test RFID applications, can this technology live up to expectations? It's still unknown – whether it's in the pharmaceutical industry (the industry is in the forefront of testing the technology of this hype), or in any other industry. The reasons are not limited to the frequently mentioned technologies, standards and privacy issues, but also very essential questions: What exactly is RFID? What benefits can it bring to the fake plan?

Roger Johnston, head of the Los Alamos National Laboratory Vulnerability Assessment Team, said: "We look at this technology from a security perspective." He conducted in-depth research on RFID technology and concluded that RFID technology may not bring Ordinary barcodes are more secure. He said: "Providing high security is a daunting challenge. People are looking for a good solution. The problem is that if you just put the RF tag on it, you think it will be magically safe, then you are wrong. "What is the reason?" The following are the five main reasons.

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