Falsified and counterfeit medicines are a chronic problem for the pharmaceutical sector, with a third of all shipments in the worst affected parts of the world estimated to contain fake medicines. Highly portable and often extremely valuable, medicines continue to be a favourite with those determined to fake products or subvert the system for illegitimate gain. Faced with this continued global threat, legislatures around the world are responding by tightening the supply chain to stamp out illicit goods.
Against this backdrop, counterfeiters will find it much harder to infiltrate legitimate markets. Even if the packaging and branding look authentic, item-level serialisation will help verify an item’s authenticity. But moving unique products around the world presents its own problems. Items do not move as single units, but in batches on pallets or in cases. Keeping track of what is included inside the secondary and tertiary level of packaging is the next major challenge for the industry. Aggregation is about understanding how accurately to record serialised pack data and build that into a hierarchical structure that records detailed information about each level of packaging.
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