Jan 23, 2007RFID applications services provider T3Ci was awarded a patent from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) this month for technology it says will help pharmaceutical makers and other companies more effectively fight product counterfeiting.
The focus of the patent is on software approaches for identifying a number of situations that may show up in the supply chain and may be indications of counterfeiting, says Peter Rieman, executive VP of T3Ci, headquartered in Mountain View, Calif.
For example, the patent describes software mechanisms that, when combined with serialized RFID technology, would help a company track duplicate product identification numbers within the pharmaceutical supply chain—even at the item level, and even when an RFID tag has been cloned. The presence of such duplicate numbers can indicate a product has been counterfeited. "If we see, for example, product unit number 27 being distributed to a pharmacy in California, it would be very suspicious if that same product number were going to a pharmacy in Massachusetts," says Richard Swan, T3Ci's chief technical officer. "In that case, the system would identify that there is a duplicate," and the software could immediately alert the affected parties. Swan, along with T3Ci's senior VP of products and services, Shantha Mohan, coinvented the technology detailed in the patent.
Duplication tracking is just one feature T3Ci executives say will make its technology different from similar electronic pedigree (e-pedigree) software and services, such as those available from SupplyScape. E-pedigrees electronically document the chain of custody of drug products moving through distribution channels. Earlier this month, EPCglobal's board ratified the organization's e-pedigree protocol as a standard. The standard's purpose is to provide the pharma industry with a common format that supply chain partners can use to collect pedigree information, and upon which providers of pedigree solutions can build their pedigree software offerings (see EPCglobal Ratifies E-Pedigree Standard). TC3i says that its patent predates the ratification of the e-pedigree protocol, but that it intends to follow all EPCglobal standards
Other features of T3Ci's software may include the ability to sniff out unauthorized drugs in the supply chain. Legitimate drugs meant for export can reenter the U.S. pharmaceutical supply chain, at great cost to drug manufacturers. For example, Rieman explains, some pharmaceutical companies sell certain drugs, such as those designed to treat HIV infection and AIDS, to third-world countries at a fraction of the price such drugs can fetch in the United States. Sometimes, however, those same bottles of drugs appear in the U.S. pharmacy market and are resold for a much higher price. T3Ci declines to comment on how its software or services would respond in if it detected such drugs being resold.
T3Ci developed the technology detailed in its patent, Swan says, while working in tandem with one of the world's top-three pharmaceutical companies in terms of revenue. According to Swan. that firm has asked not to be identified. T3Ci worked closely with the company on the technology, and the two conducted a feasibility demonstration about a year ago that simulated the tracking of a drug from the point of manufacture to its administration by a pharmacist or doctor. During the simulation, whenever the latter scanned the RFID tag, the software authenticated whether the RFID tag was legitimate, whether the drug had expired, whether it was still safe to administer, who actually manufactured and handled it, whether there were any duplicates found within the supply chain, and more.
T3Ci plans to incorporate the software techniques and features detailed in the new patent into its current and future products, which include tracking and authentication services for consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies. CPG companies make up the bulk of T3Ci's customers, says Rieman. In 2006, he adds, T3Ci stored and processed reads of more than 1 million RFID tags for its customers, and the company hopes to do the same this year for more than a billion tags.
At present, the company is in discussions with several major pharmaceutical companies regarding trials and implementations of its offerings. "We feel we have an approach here that is significantly better than the e-pedigree approach."
At least two other RFID companies were awarded patents aimed at the health-care market in recent months. Gentag was granted a patent to turn cell phones into universal RFID interrogators of passive tags. Such tags could be embedded, for example, in adhesive skin patches (see Gentag Foresees Cell Phones as Thermometers, Glucose Readers). Meanwhile, Digital Angel was awarded a patent for an RFID-enabled sensor tag it hopes will one day help diabetics more closely monitor their blood-sugar levels (see Digital Angel Developing an Implantable Glucose-Sensing RFID Tag).
