
An African Startup Using Phones to Spot Counterfeit Drugs - SQL2219
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2015-07-31/the-african-startup-using-phones-to-spot-counterfeit-drugs
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vessenes
Bright and Ashifi both launched the company together in 2007 or so. Ashifi was
at Dartmouth, Bright was maybe in London at the time. Bright was the promoter,
Ashifi the technical genius.

They parted ways, and Ashifi went on to found Sproxil with the same
technology; he's a good guy and solid engineer. Of course, promotion skills
matter -- but, I'd rather see stories about Sproxil!

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tournesol
The mention of the other player Pharmasecure being based in Lebanon, NH (just
down the road from Gogo's alma mater Dartmouth) caught my attention. It
appears the founders were also involved with Gogo near the beginning.

[1] [http://thedartmouth.com/2011/10/28/pharmasecure-
receives-39-...](http://thedartmouth.com/2011/10/28/pharmasecure-
receives-39-million/)

[2]
[http://dartmed.dartmouth.edu/winter09/html/vs_drugs.php](http://dartmed.dartmouth.edu/winter09/html/vs_drugs.php)

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vessenes
That's interesting! It was Bright and Ashifi and a former colleague of mine on
the initial patent filing, but much of the tech transfer help came from
Dartmouth folks, whether formally or informally, I don't recall. I hadn't
heard of these folks. It's such a simple and useful idea, I'm not surprised
that there are multiple attempts to deploy it.

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MichaelGG
The final issue to overcome (after adoption - getting everyone to put codes on
their products and getting folks to know to verify) is fake authentication
systems. Nothing stops an attacker from printing up codes and writing "Verify
online at e-pedigree.com" or "Text <number> to verify". It almost needs to be
a country or world-wide single authority so people know one single
number/app/site to trust.

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chaostheory
This is clever. Hopefully they expand to Asia soon.

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gruez
>This is clever

not really. I've seen systems like this years ago. off the top of my head I
can think of xiaomi, which uses a similar system to authenticate its products.

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chaostheory
hmmm has anyone else done this with drugs in Asia yet? Personally I haven't
seen it and this is really needed

