Digital intervention to reduce counterfeit and falsified medicines: A systematic review and future research agenda

Counterfeit and falsified medicines have become a threat to public health around the world. The objective of this review study is to analyze all the relevant studies on preventing or reducing falsified and counterfeit medicines through digital intervention following a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) approach. A total of 51 articles were reviewed from an initial set of 1253 articles following an inclusion-exclusion criterion. As an outcome, this review study found that falsified and counterfeit medicines have become a crucial issue for research and investigation over time. Various advanced technologies (like Blockchain, IoT, RFID, image processing, pattern recognition, etc.) are being used to fight against this issue efficiently. The review also reveals future research opportunities to facilitate the existing initiatives for preventing medicine counterfeit that includes: exploring the implications of emerging technologies; discovering the contaminated point over the medicine supply chain; investigating the less emphasized concern of counterfeit and falsified medicines; exploring all possible use-cases or features of any digital solution to reduce falsified and counterfeit medicines; and the development of counterfeit/ falsified incidents reporting system. Thus, the implication of this study is to discover the research gaps and provide future research directions focusing on the prevention of usage of falsified and counterfeit medicines through the effective use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT). (c) 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of King Saud University. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).