July 2008: The growing popularity and demand for traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) products has also led to reports about TCM herbs being contaminated or adulterated with heavy metals, unapproved chemicals or drugs.

To maintain consumer confidence, it is critical for the industry to address these concerns on the safety of TCM herbs, says Senior Minister of State for National Development and Education Grace Foo.

She was speaking at the April launch of iGATES BioInnovation, a new company to develop an online portal that keeps track of TCM herbs from source to shelf.

iGATES BioInnovation is a collaboration between local ICT company KOOPrime and TCM vendor Eu Yan Sang International.

CEO Richard Eu of Eu Yan Sang envisages iGATES as a tool for regulatory bodies globally. "It will set higher standards and tighter regulatory controls for the TCM industry. As the system is scalable, it will help bring down the cost of regulating the industry and improve response time. And most importantly, the portal is expandable to include other health supplements and food items in the future," he adds.

CEO Lim Teck Sin, CEO of KOOPrime, explains that iGATES will improve quality assurance and quality control for food and herbs.

"Using state-of-the-art technologies and leveraging our BioEngine platform, we are able to integrate chemical and genomic fingerprinting into the system to achieve more robust identification of the origin of TCM herbs right from source," Mr Lim says.

"The system will allow users to better streamline laboratory processes and create an open platform of communication between suppliers, distributors and industry stakeholders. It is our goal to provide an integrative framework for legacy systems that cover the different portions of the entire TCM value chain."

The portal has been awarded the prestigious TEC grant, to jumpstart the development, with the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority of Singapore as the piloting government agency. TEC or The Enterprise Challenge, is an initiative of the Prime Minister’s Office that supports innovative projects that have the potential to create new value or significantly improve the delivery of public service.

Ms Fu says the iGATES project contributes to ensuring the safety of TCM herbs. It is an on-line web-based software system aimed at streamlining, automating and integrating various quality and safety assurance processes throughout the TCM supply chain.

This covers Good Agronomic Practices, Good Laboratory Practices, Good Manufacturing Processes, Good Distribution Practices and Genomic Profiling. iGATES is also the world’s first web portal to combine the duo components of Good Agronomic Practices and Genomic Profiling within one IT system.

"Leveraging on IT to seamlessly integrate the above-mentioned processes, iGATES enables a large variety and volume of herbs to be tracked efficiently and accurately through real time reporting.

In the event that any TCM herb or product is found to be unsatisfactory, the exact source of the problem can be traced quickly and effectively, or the sale can be stopped before any consumer purchases the TCM herb."

The minister notes that AVA, as the nation's food safety authority, is happy to take on the role as piloting agency for the iGATES project. The iGATES project can potentially help enhance AVA's existing IT-based food safety regulatory systems. In time to come, iGATES could potentially be used for other food products, in addition to TCM herbs.

KOOPrime is a life sciences IT company. Its bio-research product, iBIOSUITE is aimed at organisations that are into biomedical and agricultural-veterinary development. KOOPrime operates in Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong. Its shareholders include Bio*One Capital, GlaxoSmithKline, National University of Singapore and MerLion Pharmaceuticals.

More at KOOPrime

Have a success story to share?
Email us at contact_isg@portalcity.com.sg to request for your story to be featured.