CANARY

Nobody should have to guess whether their medicine is real.

CANARY is a free early-warning network for fake and substandard medicine. Check a pack with your phone. See where bad batches are moving. Help protect everyone behind you in the queue.

FREE · NO ACCOUNT · NO ADVERTISING · WORKS ON ANY PHONE WITH A CAMERA
Why this exists

Detection lives in laboratories. Medicine reaches people in markets.

Falsified and substandard medicines kill quietly, and the world usually finds out months later — after the funerals, when someone traces a batch backwards. Almost no shipment is ever physically tested.

0.96
The score a poisoned batch of glycerin earned against a pure reference on a real scanner. A passing grade. The contaminant was diethylene glycol.
1 in 10
Medical products in low- and middle-income countries estimated by WHO to be substandard or falsified.
~350
Recalls a year affecting medicines taken by more than 150 million Americans — the problem is not only a poor-country problem.
Every scanner in the world asks: “is this one of the substances in my library?” A counterfeiter only has to be the substance that isn’t.
How it works

One network, three levels of checking

A phone camera cannot do chemistry — no software can change that, and anyone claiming otherwise is misleading you. So CANARY is built the other way round: many ordinary phones, whose signals together are stronger than any single instrument.

Available now

1 · Look at the pack

Photograph the packaging, blister or tablets. An AI checks printing, typography, blister and tablet geometry, tamper evidence and batch markings against what genuine product looks like — and checks the batch against published alerts.

In development

2 · The paper test card

A test card costing pocket money reacts with a crushed tablet to reveal real chemistry. Your phone reads the developed card far more reliably than the human eye. Distributed through pharmacies and health workers.

Partner pharmacies

3 · The trusted node

One real instrument per neighbourhood, at the pharmacy receiving door, running full spectral verification. Citizens flag; nodes confirm. Uncertainty escalates to real chemistry instead of being guessed at.

Our promise

We will never tell you your medicine is safe.

False reassurance kills. A green tick that persuades a mother to give the syrup is worse than no tool at all. So CANARY only ever answers in three ways — and the middle one is the honest answer most of the time.

LOOKS CONSISTENTNothing known against it. Never a promise that it is safe — a photograph cannot see inside a tablet.
CAN’T TELLShown proudly, never buried. We would rather say nothing than say something false.
SOMETHING’S OFFNever ends in panic. Always ends in an action: don’t take it yet, take it here, a report has been filed.

Every result explains itself in plain language. An answer without reasons is a guess; an answer with reasons is evidence. And we record products and places — never patients. No personal health data. No photographs kept.

What the network is made of

Four things CANARY knows

Most anti-counterfeit tools keep a catalogue of known fakes, which only ever catches the criminal already in the lineup. CANARY is built on four assets instead — and deliberately publishes some while protecting others.

ASSET A

What genuine looks like

Reference descriptions of authentic product — print, geometry, imprints, security features — per product, per market. Counterfeits are infinitely varied; the real article is singular. We model truth and measure deviation from it.

● Protected — contributed by manufacturers and regulators
ASSET B

Published alerts

Falsification notices, recalls and rapid alerts from national regulators and WHO, normalised into one map anyone can read. Essential, and by nature a rear-view mirror.

● Public — this is the signal map
ASSET C

The grammar of wrongness

Not a library of fakes, but a catalogue of the ways falsification shows itself — independent of product. It is what lets the network flag a counterfeit of something it has never seen before.

● Never published — see below
ASSET D

What the network confirms

Every case the network catches, with its outcome and — at partner pharmacies — the actual chemistry. This is what makes the other three sharper over time.

● Facts public, methods not
We publish the fact, never the method. A public list of exactly how fakes get caught is a counterfeiter’s quality-control manual.
Working together

What CANARY offers, and to whom

Regulators

A live dashboard and alert feed for your territory, at no cost. Your data stays yours — mirrored, never extracted. We amplify and route to your alerts; we do not compete with them.

Manufacturers

Contribute authentic references for your products, receive real-time alerting on your own SKUs — where falsification is appearing, how fast, and at what volume — plus a right of reply. Today you learn months late.

Pharmacies & health workers

Become a verification node. Chemical checking at the receiving door, before anything reaches a shelf — and your confirmations make the whole network smarter.

Check the medicine in your hand.

It takes fifteen seconds, costs nothing, and the answer will always be honest — including when the honest answer is “we can’t tell.”

📷 Check a medicine