Counterfeit Pharmaceuticals Interception using Radiofrequency<br/>Methods in Realtime

Objective

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.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.

• engineering and technology electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering information engineering telecommunications radio technology radio frequency
• medical and health sciences basic medicine pharmacology and pharmacy pharmaceutical drugs
• social sciences law law enforcement
• engineering and technology electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering electronic engineering sensors

Programme(s)

Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.

• FP7-SECURITY - Specific Programme "Cooperation": Security

Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

• SEC-2010.1.3-2 - Tackling counterfeit medicines and related criminal networks

Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

FP7-SEC-2010-1
See other projects for this call

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

CP - Collaborative project (generic)

Coordinator

Participants (9)