India's Commerce Secretary looks to change nation's image as hub for spurious drugs

Concerned about the negative image being projected elsewhere about the Indian pharmaceutical industry as a hub of spurious drugs, the Commerce Ministry wants to find a permanent solution to the issue by creating some system with the help of the industry or through the Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT), reports the local news service PharmaBiz.com.

At a high-level meeting held recently, Commerce and Trade Secretary Anand Sharma made it clear that he wanted a permanent solution to the problem. He backed an idea presented by the representative of Bilcare Research about introducing a technology on traceability of medicines through radio frequency.

Last month, Pune-based Applied DNA Sciences, provider of DNA-based security solutions, and Bilcare, inventors of the nonClonableID, announced a definitive agreement to market an integrated version of their technologies to provide a unique multi-layered security for brand protection, anti-counterfeiting and logistic and provenance control.