If you click on one of the following icons, your data will be sent to the corresponding social network. Chemnitz-based start-up authentic. This is good news not just for hundreds of thousands of malaria patients, but for Africa as a whole. Frank Theeg, CEO of authentic-network, convinces with new technology. An intermediary had contacted the Chemnitz-based founder of the authentic. And then, all of a sudden, everything went very quickly. Theeg was allowed to present his product in the health ministry: a digital seal that is stuck onto the blister packs containing malaria medication.
This would allow anyone β pharmacist or patient β to verify immediately via an app whether the drugs in question are genuine or counterfeit. The African experts were sceptical to begin with. A new kind of technology?
What makes this more secure than the usual barcodes or QR codes? After further discussions, Theeg succeeded in winning over the ministry decision-makers with an image β namely an image depicting a telephone with a rotary dial next to a smartphone.
This is roughly how the new seal compares with the outdated security systems from the last century. In both packets, there is a seal that can only be removed by destroying the packaging. When his smartphone scans the first pack, the app shows a green tick β but for the second packet, it shows a red warning sign, indicating a counterfeit product. Every year, hundreds of thousands of people die of malaria. Almost 90 percent of those infected worldwide live and die in sub-Saharan Africa.
The World Health Organization WHO estimates that at least one third of drugs against the lethal disease are counterfeit. It means that we here in Chemnitz are developing the technology to solve a global problem. Accordingly, the cryptographic codes in the seal are not sent to a central database but rather are compared with a blockchain twin, i. This procedure offers end-to-end solutions for a wide range of products and processes, verifying the authenticity of products as in the malaria project.
