Ashifi Gogo–Fighting the Menace of Counterfeit Drugs One SMS Message at a Time
Growing up in West Africa—where counterfeit medicines constitute between ten and thirty percent of the marketplace—the scourge of fake drugs in his native country left an impression on Ashifi Gogo. Tired of seeing people dying from counterfeit drugs that contained no active ingredients, or even from others that included toxic chemicals, Gogo started Sproxil, Inc., a company that verifies the authenticity of pharmaceuticals by employing user-friendly technologies to circumvent the counterfeiters. By using text messages, consumers provide labeling information to Sproxil, which in turn verifies the legitimacy of product—all in real time using technologies and processes the local population is familiar with. Read more….
