Free service for medical device manufacturers in the fight against counterfeit products

Apr 21, 2020

When the shelves for respirators, disinfectant spray and other epidemic protection articles are emptied, the big hour of the product counterfeiters strikes. In drugstores and pharmacies, consumers have been asking for goods for weeks in vain and have been turning to online marketplaces, especially Amazon. Internet platforms are accordingly recording massive increases in search and sales figures for prevention products, and many articles are not available here either. According to sources, Amazon currently sells 7,000 protective masks a day, the prices of which have risen by 382 percent this year [1].

Product counterfeiting as a growing problem in the medical device industry

As demand increases, so does the number of counterfeit medical products. Counterfeit products and plagiarism generally damage commercial enterprises through enormous losses in sales and damage to their reputation. 79 percent [2] of all companies fall victim to counterfeiting several times a year. In the corona crisis, however, faulty, medically useless or even dangerous products cost, in the worst case, the lives of patients, doctors and nursing staff. Manfred Berees, Head of Communications and Press Spokesman of the German Medical Technology Association BVMed, comments: "Counterfeit products on platforms such as Amazon are a major and increasing problem in the medical device sector as well. The authorities are overburdened here, as they are understaffed. Digital tools that help to detect counterfeit products faster are very helpful here: for the users, for the manufacturers of high-quality, CE-marked medical products - but also and above all for the patients, since patient safety is the top priority".

Remove dangerous counterfeits from circulation within 24 hours

From now on, the employees of the Sentryc GmbH will provide quick help. Their AI-driven trademark protection software scans online marketplaces for potential counterfeits and plagiarisms and reports them to the manufacturers so that the counterfeit products can be deleted from the online marketplaces immediately after confirmation. The Software as a Service solution is now being made available free of charge to all manufacturers of health-related products to combat pandemics. "I want the hospital and nursing staff to be able to concentrate all their energy on their task - without having to think about whether their protective clothing is genuine", explains SentrycCEO Nicole Hofmann about her decision.

"I see our commitment to finding and removing counterfeit medical products from the market as a social duty and I am pleased about every affected company that contacts me personally. We are also currently investigating the extent to which we can make our software available for finding available protection products," says Hofmann. "Many medical institutions and companies where protective measures are required complain about undersupply. We would like to contribute to creating more transparency with regard to worldwide offers and availability".

About Sentryc

The Sentryc GmbH is a technology company founded in 2019 with headquarters in Berlin and offices in Barcelona and Szczecin. The current 25-member team around managing director Nicole Jasmin Hofmann offers companies a digital solution with its proprietary brand protection software, which can be used to detect and stop product piracy and brand misuse in online marketplaces. The online experts provide their customers with a cloud solution that searches websites for products, identifies and documents potential counterfeits and then automatically reports them for deletion. Well-known companies such as Junghans, Fischerwerke or the Solingen Chamber of Commerce and Industry trust in Sentrycs product protection made in Germany. Prioritizing data protection, the company hosts its products in Germany and works in compliance with DSGVO. Further information is available at www.sentryc.com

1] https://www-junglescout-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.junglescout.com/blog/coronavirus/amp/, accessed on 24.3.2020

2] Source: VDMA Study Product Piracy 2018

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Rebecca Hollmann
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e-mail: hollmann@borgmeier.de