Pill characterization data streams for reducing exposure to inadequately identified anti-malarial medication in developing countries

That reframing led to consideration and analysis of 4 new problems that informed design of a digital platform technology for delivering a distributed medicine characterization system: 1) problematic interests associated with a focus on preventing counterfeiting, 2) the complexity of the many ways that medicines can deviate from expected identities, 3) the challenge of choosing amongst a diversity of attribute characterization technologies, and 4) the need for a flexible and distributed data aggregation mechanism.Analysis of those new problems confirmed an initial insight that a previously described digital technology for tracking malaria tests results in infrastructure limited regions could be adapted for characterizing pill attributes. Feasibility is illustrated by describing how the platform design can be implemented using open-source software and commodity computational and communication technology readily available and supportable in developing countries.A system of this type would allow users to answer several questions. Is this medicine what it is supposed to be? Can it be used to treat locally encountered malaria? What has been the experience of others who have used pills having the same identity? Ubiquitous access to global digital telecommunication infrastructure allows the system to generate data streams from these distributed medicine characterization transactions that can be used to map global patterns of use of specifically identified medicines. This can provide feedback necessary to guide efforts to reduce the burden of malaria.High-income countries have managed to reduce prevalence of inadequately identified medicines into their health systems to less than 1%. This achievement is the result of a strict regulatory framework governing the production and distribution of pharmaceutical products and harsh sanctions for offenders [1]. But, increased globalization of the market for medicine precursors and the medicines themselves has caused a proliferation o