The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), under its new millennium Indian technology leadership initiative (NMITLI) scheme has approved the implementation of the project entitled, customised adaptation of nonClonableID technology to establish authenticity of medical products', by Bilcare Limited, Pune. Dr Praful Naik, executive director and chief scientific officer, Bilcare has been designated as the principal investigator for the project.

This public-private partnership (PPP) will allow CSIR and Bilcare to advance research areas of mutual interest in the healthcare domain, build technical expertise to pursue high science and niche technology for global impact and create technologies that addresses our nation’s concerns.

The CSIR-NMITLI-Bilcare team has been assigned the challenge of demonstrating the ability of a novel nonClonableID technology to address the unmet needs in medical product authentication and patient safety. The nonClonableID technology, based on novel aspects of material science and utilising the law of randomness, shall create unique non-duplicable fingerprints.

These fingerprints when processed, digitised and activated can function as unique identification tags. The key objectives of the CSIR-NMITLI project, is to demonstrate the utility of the nonClonableID tags in establishing product accountability through secured traceability from the point of origin to the point of dispensation, authenticity check and establishing e-pedigree; and also in improving medication compliance by patients.

One of key challenges facing India in the pharmaceutical space, both in domestic and export sectors, is that of counterfeit drugs with dire implications to not only the pharmaceutical companies but also government authorities and the general public. In this context, product accountability and traceability has been recognised as a critical need for providing quality medical products. The issue covers not only detecting counterfeits or eliminating illegal duplicates but more importantly to also ensure that medicine of genuine origin is consumed by the patients.