Authentication 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, wherein the packaging line uses a hashing algorithm to encrypt the product sequence, which is then used by the packaging line to mark the packaging of the one or more packaging levels with a coding, with this coding marked on the packaging including the encrypted product sequence;
• 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 scanning equipment is configured to authenticate the pharmaceutical products by reading only a subset of the codings of the pharmaceutical products, the subset comprising between three to five of the pharmaceutical products, and wherein authentication is achieved by comparing the codings of the subset of pharmaceutical products to the coding marked on the packaging to determine whether the pharmaceutical products are genuine,
• wherein the product manufacturing equipment marks the pharmaceutical products by the embossing technology, 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,
• wherein aggregation of a group of packagings to be stored in an outer container occurs by forming the blockchain for the group of packagings and cryptographically securing the blockchain for marking on the outer container, and
• wherein de-aggregation of a group of packagings stored in the outer container includes only destruction of markings or codings of the outer container but not of the group of packagings.