Counterfeit Medicine in India
Intervening with smart packaging
Daksha Jindani, Shyam Krishna, Irene Martin, Vivek Kant
Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur
KEYWORD
#pharmaceutical drugs #counterfeit
#systemic design
ABSTRACT
India is one of the world’s leading producers and exporters of pharmaceuticals. Despite this, it has a sizable market for counterfeit and Non-Standard Quality (NSQ) Drugs. Counterfeit drugs can result in life-threatening issues, financial loss to consumers and manufacturers, as well as loss of trust in the healthcare system. Despite measures formulated to tackle this, it continues to circulate in the shadows, leaving consumers vulnerable. The proposed intervention is a design concept that aims to address consumer authentication gaps, such as awareness through labelling instructions, verification via SMS code validation, and access to medication information.
CREATIVE PROCESS
The synthesis map decomposes the counterfeit pharmaceutical problem across various analytical dimensions, such as social, technical, economic, geographic, scientific, and governance aspects. Patterns which emerged from the process of gigamapping lead to our intervention points which were consumer awareness, and consumer decision points at the point of purchase.
IMPLICATIONS & NEXT STEPS
This design concept aims for awareness and agency of the average consumer in India, and remains an untested proposition. Future directions include prototyping and rural field testing, specifically to validate consumer comprehension across literacy levels, pharmacist workflow acceptance and the handling of erroneous verification results; each capable of falsifying aspects of the present design.
References
Pathak, R., Gaur, V., Sankrityayan, H., & Gogtay, J. (2023). Tackling counterfeit drugs: The challenges and possibilities. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10184969/
Nishith Desai Associates. (n.d.). The Indian pharmaceutical industry. https://www.nishithdesai.com/fileadmin/user_upload/pdfs/Research_Papers/The-Indian-Pharmaceutical-Industry.pdf
RK Lifecare. (n.d.). The role of drug distributors in a pharma company. https://rklifecare.com/blog/the-role-of-drug-distributors-in-a-pharma-company