A falsified medicine is a risk to the patient.
Serialisation proves a number exists. It cannot prove the pack in your hand is the original. A copy-evident layer on the same code can – on any phone, even where no verification system exists.
Every five minutes, someone in Africa dies from a fake medicine.
More than 100,000 preventable deaths a year. Source: CFAO & OPALS Foundation, “Securing the Medicine Distribution Network in Africa”, 2025, reported by Capital FM.
What a copy costs you here.
A unique identifier can be read off a genuine pack and reprinted. The number verifies; the pack is not the original.
Outside the EU there is often no repository to check against at all.
A falsified pack can move through the whole chain before anyone questions it.
A number can be copied. A print cannot.
That it was issued and has not been used yet – checked at the very end of the chain, at dispensing.
That the pack in your hand carries the original print. A copied number verifies – until the genuine pack turns up somewhere else.
A copy-evident layer on the same code. A reprint fails at the first scan – with no national system needed.
What pharmaceutical manufacturers switch on first.
About pharma and healthcare.
Does the EU Falsified Medicines Directive already solve this?
It closes an important part of the problem. Under the directive, prescription packs carry a unique identifier that is checked against a central system at dispensing, so an invented number is hard to use. What it cannot establish is whether the code in front of you is the original print: a number copied from a genuine pack verifies correctly at first. A copy-evident layer on the same code closes that gap, because a reprint fails the check immediately.
How does authentic.network protect medicines?
authentic.network puts a copy-evident code on every pack. Pharmacists, health workers and patients check it with a smartphone in about a second, no app; offline with the authentic app where coverage is weak. A falsified pack fails, and every scan shows the manufacturer where falsifications appear.
What about markets outside the EU?
This is where the need is largest. Many countries have no verification repository and no obligation to check anything. The authentic.network check does not depend on a national system: the answer comes from the mark on the pack itself.
Does this replace our serialisation?
No. Where serialisation is required by law, it stays. The copy-evident layer adds what the identifier cannot prove – that this physical code is the original print – on the same pack, without a second mark or supplier.
Does it work on small packs and blisters?
The mark is a printed code, so it goes wherever your artwork goes: on the carton, on a label or integrated into existing printed elements.
See the check on your own pack.
Tell us which markets and which packs concern you. We show you how the mark sits alongside your existing identifier and what a pharmacist would see.
Real impact.