Embedded Micro-optic Security Features for Pharma and Other Applications

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As per the WHO report it is estimated that 10 to 15% of the world's drug supply is counterfeit and in 2017, 25.0 million illicit and counterfeit drugs were seized by Interpol. Illicit supply of counterfeit medical items specially during a public health crisis can be catastrophic. Healthcare authorities worldwide have therefore developed regulations to counter the supply of fake drugs (e.g., European Delegated Regulation (EU) 2016/161, US falsification directive DSCSA or ISO standard 21976:2018). These regulations make a unique identifier sequence AND a device for the verification of any tampering essential for pharma packaging.To comply with these regulations, sophisticated serialisation and track/ trace systems have been developed globally over the past few years by assigning each pack a unique identifier. The availability of Tamper evidence features is however limited to security printed "Void" labels, holograms and custom package seals (e.g., NHS drugs are dispensed with self-adhesive labels with cross-cuts which break the label while peeling off), these measures however only apply to external packaging.In developing countries where medicines are sold "loose" (as individual tablets from a strip) unless the counterfeit measures are implemented on every blister/ strip pack, above regulations are of little significance! The best way of protecting every "tablet" from counterfeiting would be to embed an "easy to recognise but impossible to replicate" security feature in each blister/ strip pack during their manufacturing. Unfortunately, existing security feature like holograms, Fresnel lenses, diffractive features cannot be embedded as surface relief pattern responsible for the effect gets filled up.This project aims to bring inherently secure "easy to recognise and impossible to replicate", overt, dynamic, anti-counterfeit and tamper-evident features currently used only in high denomination currency notes (e.g., UK £50 and US $100 notes) first-time to pharma industry cost-effectively. Optrical has addressed some of the key challenges in developing this technology for external/ non-consumption applications.In this project we aim to develop the complete process for the production of such embeddable films on industrial scale and test the prototype for health safe/ pharma compliant product suiting the demands of medical industry.