True-Spec

True-Spec

Franck Verzefé

Category

Cameroon

Description

True-Spec is a portable device that uses artificial intelligence to allow hospitals, pharmacies, pharmaceutical laboratories and quality control centres to verify if certain drugs are genuine or falsified. This process takes less than 20 seconds and can be conducted anytime and anywhere. This solution allows the user to save money, as well as build a database to help estimate the true impact of substandard or falsified medical products and to collect, structure and systematically analyse accurate, reliable and quality data for Africa. It is estimated that up to 72,000 to 169,000 children die each year from pneumonia due to substandard and falsified antibiotics in sub-Saharan Africa. In addition, there are alarming rates of malaria deaths every year due to substandard and falsified antimalarial medicines in this region. Analytical devices to detect false drugs are expensive and mostly imported. Furthermore, there is a dire absence of the systemised collection of high-quality data on falsified and sub-standard medicines in Africa.