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Rapid, optical and global detection tool against counterfeits in every pocket

TrueMed

TrueMed will change the brand protection market with modern AI based software approach for detecting originals and counterfeits around the world. TrueMed’s innovation is the next generation method for rapidly detecting goods, at any point of distribution, by customs or even consumers. It can be used by brand owners and authorities in global and cross-border collaborations. It is 100% non-additive, hence very cost-effective, agile, and capable of being adopted to different use cases.

Innovation Summary

Innovation Overview

The entire counterfeit market in 2020 was approximately €1700 billion and growing at a CAGR rate of 18%. According to statistics from the WHO, counterfeit medicines cause the death of up to one million people every year.

The pharmaceutical industry, regulators, public health and customs have checkpoints where the validity of products is assessed. Due to the complexity of the supply chain, counterfeits still find a way into distribution even in the most developed countries. Consumers, re-sellers and hospitals have no instant and global means of checking if goods are authentic or not.

TrueMed® is the world’s first counterfeit detection service in every pocket that can instantly identify and track counterfeit packages and pills, powders and vials. It is the first solution that can be used throughout the value chain from raw material suppliers to consumers and hospitals. With the patent-pending deep-tech of TrueMed®, users scan the target, e.g. a package by using the TrueMed® mobile app. Image processing combines proprietary AI and Computer Vision techniques. In only a few seconds, the user will know if the scanned target is a counterfeit or not.

The main advantages of TrueMed® are:
- Not having to add anything to the medicines, packages or supply chain which results in multimillion savings per brand.
- Works instantly with new as well as with established products and packages already distributed. Virtually every market is accessible.
- Offers unique comparison, forensics, analytics and reporting tools to provide totally new data for law enforcement purposes.
- Wide coverage: Latest AI technology made available and scalable in every smartphone globally.

Innovation Description

What Makes Your Project Innovative?

Currently, industry tries to protect itself with solutions that are added to a package or product – QR codes, holograms, NFC tags, invisible inks, serialisation. This increases unit prices and adds complexity to manufacturing and supply chains.

With TrueMed platform, current problems are converted to benefits for brand owners and government officials:
- The 1st non-additive solution in the world: manufacturers do not need to change packaging or manufacturing processes.
- Covers the whole supply chain and all use cases.
- Works everywhere, instantly, even with legacy products
- Collects data globally to be further analysed by public safety and pharmaceutical industry. Detected counterfeits are versioned and grouped. Offers advanced comparison tools, analytics, reports, and alerts.
- Self-learning platform: Data can be used to re-educate AI and compare results globally, and thus track potential counterfeit routes and sources.

What is the current status of your innovation?

The pilot project now to be executed intends to describe how modern technologies can help with existing processes to detect and compare products at laboratory level and how automated detection can help with the workflow process by saving time and increasing effectiveness. In the same pilot it is assessed how liberalizing the counterfeits detected can further speed up the comparison work with modern tools and how grouping and versioning of the counterfeits can enhance the current workflows. And lastly, it is tested how additional data could provide value in wide roll-out and how additional data could quickly be taken in use cross-border as a novel form of evidence.

Innovation Development

Collaborations & Partnerships

TrueMed has involved many parties within development area, top10 pharmaceutical brands, major brand owners from other industries as well to understand the problem statements and deliverables. On top of this TrueMed has been working with some European government officials to understand the government processes, problems and ways to solve them with modern approach with totally new type of data delivered. TrueMed has also been very active e.g. with DHS, WHO, Europol and INTERPOL, in global context.

Users, Stakeholders & Beneficiaries

With TrueMed solution companies, governments and ultimately citizens will have win-win-win scenarios. In addition, brand owners are provided with digitalized protection mechanism which provides valuable data. Governments can use platform for detecting counterfeit goods at domestic internal level, but also can also share data cross border. TrueMed assists in detecting routes and sources of the falsified, illicit and counterfeit products. Service ultimately protects consumers' safety and health.

Innovation Reflections

Results, Outcomes & Impacts

TrueMed has been tested with several pilots and detection accuracy is an impressive 99,97%. As a platform, TrueMed has been tested to penetrate a significant number of users addressing the platform at the same time with the capability of serving up to 10M users per month. Expansion capabilities have been created to add capacity from the cloud, hence capacity problems have virtually vanished.

Challenges and Failures

One problem for the TrueMed has been different lighting condition(s). TrueMed has used a lot of effort to solve this challenge and has implemented various technical capabilities to assist with this challenge, still in a way that a mobile device can be used in the field. It is also observed that solution works exceptionally well between 20 to 2000LUX lighting which is enough to cover 99% of the required use cases.

TrueMed is constantly working with its market visibility which has been a challenge in the current pandemic environment where all travel is banned. TrueMed sees this program might be helpful in adding visibility for such next generation tools across the world.

TrueMed has recently been fixing detection speed and detection accuracy in different external conditions. The platform has also built up an excellent relationship with AWS to help with latest security technologies and follows a process that immediately tackles challenges.

Conditions for Success

Ultimately success is expected if governments and brand owners digitize processes, which are currently carried out manually. This results in successful cross border collaboration between government organisations. When a counterfeit product is detected in one country, the information can be instantly provided to other countries. These countries are then in a state of preparedness for the eventuality of the counterfeit crossing their border.

Replication

TrueMed is currently the only company in the world addressing the problem in this manner by using AI and computer vision and machine-learning technologies, hence raising a lot of interest in the markets. Entry barriers for the business have been rather high from a technical standpoint as TrueMed has been solving this technical question for the past 3 years and can now proudly deliver a world class platform with detection tools for the market. Another major barrier is market viscosity, namely that is it takes rather a long time for brand owners and governments to adjust the modern methods of working with counterfeits. During the current pandemic environment it is seen that other rivals might not enter to the market at this point due to this high barrier of the market entry.

Lessons Learned

We have learned that counterfeit problems are far greater than currently seen by general public, and are growing at a fast rate. Criminals are far faster than brand owners or governments who try to protect their goods and citizens from counterfeits. The problem is not confined to medicines, but is also found in goods as diverse as cosmetics, car parts, or electronics, in fact everywhere. And this is where TrueMed comes in. Just as TrueMed provides next generation tools, counterfeiters are getting more and more innovative with their product push to the market. Constant development will be needed to stay ahead to help governments and brand owners to stop counterfeits effectively. In addition, one major learning aspect is that we need all parties to become involved in stopping counterfeits, no-one will be successful by fighting alone. TrueMed provides ready-made tools to share the data with cross-border collaborations and with brand owners. This maximizes the knowledge and impact.

Anything Else?

TrueMed has several patents pending and trademark in its core markets.

Supporting Videos

Year: 2019
Level of Government: Regional/State government

Status:

  • Developing Proposals - turning ideas into business cases that can be assessed and acted on
  • Implementation - making the innovation happen

Innovation provided by:

Media:

Date Published:

20 October 2021

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