Every pharmaceutical supply chain has a back door. It is the returns stream. 

Product comes back from wholesalers and pharmacies every day. It is processed, logged and credited. In most companies, brand protection at that stage is light or non-existent. Reimbursement is paid on whatever product arrives. That makes returns one of the easiest routes for a counterfeit to re-enter the legitimate supply chain, and get paid for it. 

Closing it does not have to mean a new capital project. When image verification runs as part of the serialization process a company already operates, there is no additional infrastructure investment. No new packaging. No new hardware. No changes to the production line. The serialization data, systems and returns workflow already in place do the heavy lifting. AI adds the layer that proves the product in the box is real. 

On October 15, Boehringer Ingelheim, SAP and TrueMed held a joint webinar on how they set out to close that door. Four speakers led the session: 

• Jyrki Berg, CEO and Co-Founder, TrueMed 

• Klaus Imig, IT Supply Chain Integrity, Boehringer Ingelheim 

• Mark McGee, Executive Director, US Supply, Boehringer Ingelheim 

• Dennis Keilbach, Head of Life Sciences Serialization Product Management, SAP 

They covered three things: why product returns need protecting, the pilot run inside Boehringer Ingelheim’s U.S. reverse logistics operation, and what the results mean for pharmaceutical companies. Here is a recap. 

Patient safety is the starting point 

Boehringer Ingelheim was clear about why this work exists. Patient safety sits at the top of its agenda. A counterfeit that slips back in through returns means a potential threat exists in the market.  

The threat is not standing still. Counterfeiters grow more sophisticated every year. They hunt for new revenue and for weak points in the system. The World Health Organization estimates that around 1 in 10 medical products in low- and middle-income countries is substandard or falsified. Returns are exactly the kind of weak point sophisticated actors look for. 

The tools have lagged. Counterfeit identification, analysis and forensic intelligence have long been limited, slow and manual. Physical security features can be copied. Serialization helps, but a valid code can be duplicated onto a fake carton. Boehringer Ingelheim needed a new way to identify bad product without changing how it manufactures or packages medicine. 

Three companies, one closed loop 

The pilot worked because each partner brought a piece the others did not have. 

Boehringer Ingelheim brought the brand, the products and the operational reality. It already complies with the FDA’s Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA). Its U.S. returns are handled centrally at a reverse logistics service provider. That gave the pilot a single, controlled point where every returned carton passes through. 

SAP brought the backbone. SAP Advanced Track and Trace for Pharmaceuticals (ATTP) and the SAP Traceability Hub form one global hub for all of Boehringer Ingelheim’s serialization processes. They connect contract manufacturing, the internal supply chain, 3PLs, regulatory databases and reverse logistics. SAP’s Verification Router Service checks serial data under DSCSA. SAP dashboards give the business one place to see results. SAP ATTP and the Traceability Hub connect every Boehringer Ingelheim serialization process.  

TrueMed brought the AI. TrueMed’s platform authenticates a product from its images alone. It compares the returned carton against the genuine artwork: logo, text, colors and layout. Nothing is added to the packaging or the production line. The product image is the security feature. 

Together they built a closed loop. Each stage adds evidence to the same tracking record, keyed to the product’s unique serial number (EPC). 

1. Capture. At the returns center, staff scan the carton’s Data Matrix code on the flap (GTIN, serial, batch, expiry) and take a top-view image of the carton artwork. 

2. Create the record. The SAP Traceability Hub opens a record with the EPC as the key for all results. 

3. Verify. The serial number is checked against the Verification Router Service. 

4. Analyze. TrueMed’s AI compares the carton’s artwork against the genuine reference it was trained on. 

5. Record the result. The verdict is written back to the same EPC record in SAP. 

6. Monitor. Teams review alerts and trends in SAP dashboards, with detailed results in TrueMed for deeper counterfeit analysis. 

After the returns center submits the images, everything runs automatically. There is no separate system for operators to learn. The check happens inside the process Boehringer Ingelheim and SAP already run. 

The live demo showed that flow end to end: returns intake, serialization validation, TrueMed AI verification and the result landing in the Boehringer Ingelheim SAP dashboard. A verified carton simply reads “TrueMed Check: PASS.” 

What the pilot showed 

The pilot set out to answer one question. Can AI reliably check whether each returned product is genuine, inside a real returns operation, without changing the product? The partners’ conclusion was direct. The AI platform did what was promised. 

Six outcomes stood out. 

• Visibility in SAP. Every returned product’s status, and the reason for any failure, appears directly in the SAP dashboard. 

• Stronger authentication. Image verification adds a strong authentication layer to Boehringer Ingelheim’s supply chain integrity program. No changes to the factory or the product were required. 

• Infiltration identified before payment. Suspect product can be flagged before reimbursement is issued. That tightens fraud control and stops counterfeiters from being paid for returning fakes. 

• Digital evidence. Every return can be photographed, creating a record of the condition it came back in. 

• Forensic intelligence. Results can feed forensic systems, helping teams trace fraudulent and non-compliant cases back to their source. 

• AI proven in practice. Today’s AI can be deployed now to make the supply chain safer and improve patient safety. 

One finding matters more than the rest for anyone running a large portfolio. Verification can be switched on for products already in the market. No artwork update is required. Protection starts with the packaging that already exists. 

Why this matters for patient safety 

Serialization tells you whether a code is valid. It cannot tell you whether the box carrying that code is real. Pairing serial checks with image-based authentication answers both questions at once, for every returned unit. 

That changes the economics for counterfeiters. A returns stream that once paid out on anything now checks everything. Each fake caught is one less fake resold into the market, and one less risk to a patient. 

It also changes what brand protection teams know. Returns stop being a blind spot and become a source of intelligence. Every image, result and failure reason is stored against the serial number. Patterns that were invisible become visible. 

What comes next 

The pilot proved the model in U.S. reverse logistics. The same approach applies anywhere product images can be captured: quality complaints, field investigations, customs checks and market surveillance. TrueMed’s platform is built to fuse those inputs into one intelligence picture for investigation and enforcement. 

Closing a blind spot does not require new packaging, new hardware or a new process. It requires the right partners, connected in the right place. 

Missed the session, or want to see the demo?  

Contact Us – https://truemedinc.com/contact-us/