Moreover, this situation is being exacerbated by increasing regulatory demands to include drug 'pedigree' information - tracking the manufacture and distribution of medicines - in order to guard against the growing problem of drug diversion and counterfeiting.
One possible solution - a tiny three-dimensional barcode that can contain a huge amount of data - has now been developed by researchers at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in the UK.
David Mendels and Alexandre Cuenat, have developed 3D cubes - around 30 micrometres across and invisible to the naked eye - made of silicon and coated in plastic. The cubes can be drilled by an electron beam on all six faces in a 90,000-point grid. The pattern of this grid, achieved by the depth of the drilled holes, provides a huge capacity for storing data.
The technology is particularly useful as a covert means of storing data, as it is almost impossible to detect by sight or touch, requires specialist equipment to read the data and uses a high level of encryption, according to a report in New Scientist magazine.
The data on the cube can be scanned in as little as a minute, according to the NPL researchers. Companies are already talking to the NPL about incorporating the system into their products, but at a current price of around £1 per unit, its use will likely be restricted - at least in the first instance - to very high-value goods.
The need for technologies to help distinguish counterfeit drugs from their genuine counterparts was brought into focus by an investigative report published in the open-access health journal PloS Medicine in March, which suggested that up to 15 per cent of all drugs sold worldwide - worth of $35 billion (€25bn) - are fakes.