Deadly Prescriptions | How can testing the quality of prescription medications help save 128,000 lives each year?
Valisure focuses on patient advocacy and advanced research in order to bring transparency and increased quality to the pharmaceutical industry and its consumers.
THE PROBLEM
50% of Americans who take medications report having had a problem with their medications at a refill. When they pick up a prescription from the pharmacy, they trust that the medication will work as intended, however, this is not always the case. Studies conducted by Georgetown University show that millions of Americans have been affected by variability when refilling their prescription, oftentimes with life threatening complications. Even though there are roughly three drug recalls a day in the U.S., and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) receives over 100,000 reports each year associated with suspected medication errors in the United States, the FDA does not regularly test pharmaceuticals. If the FDA isn’t responsible for testing medicines to ensure that they work and are safe, then who is?
Medicine isn’t all the same and just like food, not all batches of medication are good. With more than 131 million people, or 66% of adults, using prescription drugs in the United States, the need for better regulations is there. The use of prescription drugs increases exponentially for older people and for those with chronic conditions, who without the proper medication are at a much higher risk for complications and even death. This includes the large majority of adults living with one of five common chronic conditions (diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, arthritis, and cancer) who need to regularly use prescription drugs in order to manage their condition.
Approximately 80% of ingredients used in U.S. medications are manufactured in India or China, where many of the ingredients are not properly regulated. The medicine that arrives to your door is a part of an extremely complex supply chain, with the products of the $2 trillion global pharmaceutical industry typically touching 10–20 different sets of hands before reaching you. The FDA only has the resources to spot-check a few dozen of medication products a year (out of the 4.5 billion prescriptions given in the U.S. per year), but in the wake of recalls, the American Medical Association is assessing whether or not more needs to be done in order to protect the U.S. drug supply, including the implementation of independent testing.
THE SOLUTION
Valisure is bringing transparency and increased quality to the pharmaceutical industry through the advanced research and development of pharmaceutical analysis. After Adam Clark-Joseph suffered from serious complications caused by batch variability in his anticonvulsant medication, he connected with David Light to develop and deploy a solution for this problem that exists throughout the pharmaceutical industry. Together, they formed a team of like-minded pharmacy experts and scientists and founded Valisure. Their main mission is to help prevent people from suffering from the adverse effects of low-quality medications through focusing on patient advocacy, consumer protection, and improving the analysis of medication batches.
The process is simple and straightforward: when a customer gets a prescription from their doctor, they request that their doctor sends it to Valisure. As long as Valisure carries the medication, they will send the tested and approved prescription to the customer’s door.
What happens from the company side is equally straightforward with a simple value chain: Valisure receives batches without chemical analysis and analyzes them in their DEA and FDA registered ISO 17025 accredited laboratory using a combination of laser-based technology and FDA standard techniques. They then return any batches of bad medications and send the quality assured batches directly to their customers.
Valisure hasn’t reinvented the wheel. They do the same thing that all pharmaceutical companies do: deliver medicines to those who need them. However, the biggest added value and the reason they are making massive strides in improving access to quality medications is that they put every single batch of medication that comes their way through rigorous chemical analysis, ensuring quality and reducing the risk of inconsistent batches. Valisure is the only American pharmacy that doesn’t rely solely on the rare testing of medication batches by the original manufacturer (who self-report the results), but is taking it upon themselves to stop the blind consumption of medications that are silently hurting prescription users.
It’s time that we open our eyes to reality and make medication analysis and testing the new norm. It will only help to improve our standards on a national level and save countless lives.
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