Authenication system for use with pharmaceuticals

An authentication system for pharmaceutical products, comprising:

• product manufacturing equipment that uses embossing technology to form and mark the pharmaceutical products with a coding;
• a packaging line that places the pharmaceutical products in one or more packaging defining one or more packaging levels;
• in-line reading equipment to determine a product sequence defined by physical attributes and locations of pharmaceutical products in the packaging, the product sequence then being encrypted and used to mark the packaging of the one or more packaging levels with a coding;
• scanning equipment at a point in a supply chain downstream from the packaging line, the scanning equipment including a camera that images the codings of the pharmaceutical products and of the one or more packaging levels and a processor that compares the codings to one another to authenticate whether the pharmaceutical products are genuine,
• wherein the product manufacturing equipment marks the pharmaceutical products without adding marking products such as inks to the pharmaceutical products, the encryption of the product sequence is achieved using public-private key, and the authentication of whether the pharmaceutical products are genuine is achieved without causing the scanning equipment to communicate with a central data repository away from the supply chain, and
• wherein the system is configured to produce a series of packagings each having a coding, the series of packagings and the codings collectively defining a blockchain that can be stored and used for authentication at any point in the supply chain.