The CONPHIRMER consortium has come together to put into the hands of customs officers and other agents of law enforcement a portable and easy-to-use sensor for telling genuine medicines from fakes without having to remove the medicines from their packaging. With this device agencies charged with tackling the growing menace of the trafficking in counterfeit medicines will be able to screen packaged pharmaceuticals at EU borders and airports quickly and accurately using a non-invasive and non-destructive technology that uses only harmless radio waves.

The proposal is for a three-year programme leading to the trialing of a prototype, portable, handheld scanner, that will draw on the expertise of seven organisations in five states, including two recent additions to the EU family, Poland and Slovenia. The technology employed will be based on quadrupole resonance (QR), a radiofrequency (RF) spectroscopic technique that has already been developed and deployed for the detection of concealed explosives. The completed prototype will not require operators to have special chemical or technical knowledge to deploy it, allowing training in its use to be completed quickly; and it will utilise only easy to source RF and electrical parts, unlike alternative technologies such as Raman, infra-red or terahertz spectroscopic methods. It will also offer a clear advantage over these other technologies in that RF can penetrate even multiple layers of packaging material, allowing for scans to be carried out without the need to remove pharmaceutical products from their packaging.