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The 5 Myths of RFID

Big pharma's RFID trials aim to keep fake drugs out of your medicine cabinetbut the technology has significant limitations.

At AmerisourceBergen, a complex track-and-trace pilot project is under way that would allow the $61 billion distributor to check the source of any drugs that pass through its distribution facility in Sacramento, Calif. Funny thing is, RFID technology is just one tiny piece of the projectthe one that (hopefully) makes it operate quickly, rather than securely. The component of the technology that actually authenticates drugs is a registry handled by VeriSign, which is known mostly for its digital certificate products.

Shay Reid, AmerisourceBergen's vice president for integrated solutions, explains. Drugs that have RFID tags are read with an RF reader, but the crucial part from a security standpoint is what happens next: two-way communication. "If I am the rightful owner, and VeriSign can verify that I did receive [the product] from an upstream trading partner, then they'll give me a certification number that allows me to further distribute the product downstream," Reid says. "If they can't verify that I am the rightful owner, then the transaction will be refused."

Here's the catch: Typically, products that are marked with RFID tags are also marked with a 2-D bar code, which is similar to a traditional bar code but carries more information. "The 2-D is the backup," Reid explains.

That's because the most common complaint about RFID tags is that they're flaky. Read rates as low as 70 percent have been reported, and accuracy can be especially difficult when liquid medicine or foil wrapping is involved. (To be fair, RFID technology has come a long way in the past couple years, and tests of the latest tags are much more encouraging. Cardinal Health reports that its latest tests showed 99 percent accurate read-rates and no ill effect from liquids or foils.)

For now, however, the 2-D bar code is generally considered a more reliable marker than the RFID tagalbeit one that takes longer to read, because it can't be scanned through packaging material using radio waves.

The crucial point of either marking mechanism is that each container be labeled with a unique, serialized number. That way, once bottle #1894892432 has been received by a pharmacy in Silver City, N.M., a bottle with #1894892432 can't also be authenticated by a pharmacy in Brunswick, Md. Otherwise, counterfeiters could simply churn out fake RF tagsor 2-D bar codes, for that matteras easily as they churn out fake drugs, and there would be no central clearinghouse identifying the duplicates.