WISekey NFC IoT Chip enables brand protection and fights counterfeiting by providing a digital identification of the product for manufacturing control, product authentication and tracking and tracing
Image: The IoT Industry is a game changer new business segment for WISeKey. Photo: Courtesy of TheDigitalWay from Pixabay.
WISeKey International Holding, a cybersecurity IoT platform company, announced that it has adapted its US patent. No. 7,898,422 for an anti-counterfeiting NFC device designed to protect the pharmaceutical industry from the escalating counterfeit problem which is causing damage to these companies and putting lives at risk (see list of U.S. patents here).
The World Health Organization (WHO) recently estimated that one-third of all medicines sold worldwide are illegitimate. Ecommerce has provided a gateway for these illegitimate products which falsely associate themselves with reputable brands to give themselves credibility. This has led to a large rise in illegal online pharmacies as well as online marketplaces distributing them. Fake drugs are everywhere. And they’re having a devastating impact, not just on pharmaceutical companies, but on consumers.
WISekey NFC IoT Chip enables brand protection as it effectively fights counterfeiting by providing a digital identification of the product for manufacturing control, product authentication and tracking and tracing in a reliable and secure way, while protecting user’s personal data.
The NFC IoT Chip installed on a smart bottle can be scanned remotely by an NFC reader to retrieve information on the pharmaceutical product, to confirm the authenticity of the information. When the pharmaceutical product is used, the NFC device is installed on the smart bottle/package is damaged, so that the packaging cannot be reused for another counterfeit product. The NFC IoT Chip authenticates the content of on the braded packaging using a state-of-the-art technologically that encompass wireless communication capabilities for connecting with computing devices such as smartphones or wearables and an artificial memory that helps provide alerts through display or sound system. Transparency Market Research estimates that the global smart bottle market of US$88.6 million in 2016, will reach US$258.8 million by 2024, registering a CAGR of 14.3% between 2016 and 2024.
Carlos Moreira, WISeKey’s CEO noted, “Our Trusted IoT NFC patents and technologies are already being deployed in a number of industries from luxury, logistics and manufacturing to automotive and retail. The next area to benefit from this unique IoT Trusted NFC technology is the pharmaceutical industry where the NFC technology has a growing number of profitable and sustainable use cases and is now compatible with all major mobile phones including iPhones.”
Pharmaceutical companies can benefit from WISeKey’s NFC IoT Chip technology by adding it into their existing anti-illicit trade processes and gather lifesaving product information and patient treatment options, offer online diagnostics and alerts that improve prescription adherence. At least 20% of medication prescriptions are never filled, and 50% of medications for chronic disease are not taken as prescribed. Both factors cause massive, useless expense and hundreds of thousands of deaths and hospitalizations annually.
These NFC-enabled and communication-related function allows pharma companies to inform patients via authenticated NFC based apps about illegal channels, recalled products or expiration dates. In return, patients can report side effects immediately.
WISeKey has aggregated over 46 IoT patent families (more than 200 patents in total) to its portfolio (https://www.wisekey.com/patents/) required to power the WISeKey IoT Platform. For WISeKey, adding to its patent portfolio and intellectual property is key to ensuring that the company will remain a major player in the IoT Industry for years to come as company focuses on integrating unique technology that is differentiated, protected and hard to reproduce based on tangible scientific discoveries or engineering innovations.
The IoT Industry is a game changer new business segment for WISeKey. An estimated 50 billion IoT devices are expected to be connected by 2020, while world’s population is estimated to grow to 6.8 billion; thus, there will be more than 7 IoT devices per person connected to the internet by 2020. As a result, it is anticipated that this year already the number of IoT devices will surpass the number of mobile devices. By 2021, it is expected 1.8 billion PCs, 8.6 billion mobile devices, and 15.7 billion IoT devices; by 2035, the amount of data usage is expected to grow more than 2,400 times, from 1 exabyte to 2.3 zettabytes.
A huge and increasing amount of sensitive data that will need to be protected by the IoT chips produced by WISeKey will be interchanged between connected devices and back-end servers, allowing companies to provide users with new type of applications. These applications will be designed to offer increased control over the use of resources, improve efficiency in power grids, optimize processing of information in industrial environments, secure autonomous vehicles, provide better and higher quality healthcare services and personalized experience for shopping or leisure, among others.
Source: Company Press Release