Facilitating Standardization through Living Labs - The Example of Drug Counterfeiting

The increasing threat inherent to counterfeited drugs requires coordinated effort among multiple actors with diverging interests. Although multiple initiatives exist, no comprehensive and promising development and diffusion of a commonly applicable and interoperable solution has taken place so far. Agreeing on standards is an essential step on the road to a successful initiative on drug counterfeiting. To facilitate standardization, especially the initiation of a standardization process, we propose the concept of Living Labs as an innovative developing and testing environment serving multiple purposes. Testing solutions in real-life-contexts, aligning multiple interests and resulting in a prestandard and a proof-of-concept are the advantages of this concept which facilitate the participation and coordinated action among a broad set of different stakeholders.