Choosing a Connected Product Technology for Anticounterfeiting

Terry Katz, CEO and co-founder of ForgeStop Technology Corporation, spoke with PharmTech about the company’s connected product technology that assists manufacturers to build near-field communication (NFC) technology into pharmaceutical products and packaging. According to Katz, ForgeStop’s NFC system already works at scale: it is fully deployed with pharmaceutical companies and protects millions of products, so early adopters have absorbed most of the learning curve, making deployment straightforward.

Katz says the technology must never slow or stop a production line. The company’s system runs at full line speeds of 600 to 700 products a minute and, he says, is probably faster than print-based solutions because it reads and writes to packs by radio waves. Because it gives every pack a unique identity, it also serializes. Brands without serialization get it built in; those already serializing can run ForgeStop in parallel as another source of truth, recording the millisecond each pack was read.

On privacy, Katz says brands always own their data, and no patient data enters its system. If a brand adds a form to the scan experience, responses go straight to the brand, with ForgeStop attaching only the pack’s batch and serial number. He compares the model to Microsoft Outlook, which carries email without reading it, and says ForgeStop is SOC 2 and HIPAA compliant and conforms to Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation.

The system also produces “a mountain” of data. Rather than one record per lot, every unit gets its own identity that can collect data separately from its batch, such as which distributor, warehouse, or truck handled it, plus any cold chain data. When a patient authenticates a pack, the brand sees that box’s full journey. Brands are learning how their products move worldwide, and diversion alerts flag products that land where they shouldn’t.

Click the video above to watch the interview.

Watch part 1 of the interview here.