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news.Gilden Photonics, a company that designs, manufactures and supplies optical spectroscopy solutions, components, turn-key instruments and OEM components, has devised a system to enable spot checks to be carried out on suspected batches of drugs and identify fakes.
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According to World Health Organization (WHO) up to at least 10% of medicines globally are counterfeit with as much as a third being fake in some developing countries.
In the last three years there have been nine recalls of counterfeit medicines in the UK which had reached pharmacy and patient levels while a further five cases were discovered at wholesaler level before they reached the market.
Reportedly, many counterfeit drugs are imported into the UK from manufacturers in India, China, Brazil and Russia and, until now, many of the fakes are very difficult to distinguish without time-consuming laboratory-testing.
Glasgow-based Gilden Photonics has devised portable devises which deploy a beam of light to detect counterfeits by comparing the spectral signature of the fakes with the real drugs.
Kevin Lynch of Gilden Photonics, said: “The technology uses a laser and a spectrograph combined and is small enough to be taken out into the field. When the laser beam passes through we check the reflection from the drug in the spectral graph.
We have built a range of sensors which look at objects using a wide portion of the electromagnetoc spectrum. We have used this to build up a major database of known materials which can then be used to compare with samples.