CPHI Pharma Award Winner: Drug Delivery, Devices, & Packaging

In October 2026, CPHI announced the winners of the CPHI Pharma Awards at CPHI Milan. In the Drug Delivery, Devices, & Packaging category, ForgeStop Technology Corporation won for its connected product technology that assists manufacturers to build near-field communication (NFC) technology into pharmaceutical products and packaging. The technology provides anti-counterfeiting and authentication, track and trace through the supply chain to the pharmacist or patient, and electronic product information (ePI). With ePI, patients tap a phone to a drug package to read its information in an easier format than a long, hard-to-read paper insert, explains Katz.

ForgeStop was forged when Katz, a nutraceutical brand owner, discovered his products had been counterfeited. Katz says he had assumed counterfeiting was a problem for luxury brands, not a small-to-medium supplement company. He could not find a protection service he trusted, so he and his co-founders built the first version of ForgeStop for his own products, letting consumers confirm authenticity before buying or taking them. The results led him to commercialize the technology. Currently, ForgeStop works across several industries, including pharmaceuticals worldwide.

Katz sees 2 tracks in fighting counterfeits. Enforcement, which large pharma companies’ brand protection teams handle well, only begins after an incident, and at worst patients get sicker or die. Authentication, ForgeStop’s focus, lets patients, pharmacists, and physicians verify a drug before it is prescribed or taken.

He argues that most authentication methods, including holograms, printed serialization, and QR codes, are print-based and so can be copied well enough to fool consumers, citing look-alike holograms sold online for half a cent each. ForgeStop instead uses the same NFC technology behind tap-to-pay, pairing a simple phone tap with high-level encryption on the back end.