In today's technologically advanced world, the prevalence of counterfeit products in the market is a major challenge. In every industry from pharmaceutical to the food industry, counterfeit products have a destructive impact on the health of the consumers as well as loss of jobs and lives of millions across the globe. This calls for a better system of product traceability to impede the introduction of counterfeit products in the market. This work proposes a method in which a blockchain inspired system is implemented with the combination of the digital chain of information to the physical tag on the products. The physical tag has DNA of a known source to be privy to only select nodes and connected to the central database. The proposed method includes the use of magnetic stripe cards as product labels. This label is made to contain digital information, which is then coupled with the modified blockchain system. Pertaining to the high information density property of the magnetic stripe cards, partial DNA sequence information can be easily concatenated with the serial number of the product. This can also be re-programmed to track the route of the product along the supply chain. The main feature of the proposed method is the coupling of the re-programmability of the magnetic card labels with the physical DNA tag information contained on the label. The tag can be easily verified even after the product leaves the digital chain. Whilst, within the network coverage, the blockchain inspired tracking system can help track the route taken by the product. This mechanism of merging the physical information with the Internet of Things (IOT) shall address the situation of counterfeit products to an advanced degree of accuracy and reliability.
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