Today, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that they're partnering with Drugs.com with a plan to "expand the reach" of the the health and medical content that the FDA provides. It's important to remember that Drugs.com is not an online pharmacy.
As we were reading the announcement it made a brief mention of the Drugs.mobi web site. Once there we learned Drugs.mobi is a beta release. The site offers a number of info tools and are organized into a number of categories.
+ For Consumers
+ For Health Professionals
+ Pill Identification Wizard
+++Enter info about a pill and get back images and info.
Here's a search for the letters nexi and it properly returned
two images (front and back) and info about Nexium.
The same service is available on the main web site.
+ FDA Consumer Updates
and a link to the Main Drugs.com website.
A great start with info that might be useful on
the go
A Quick Look at the Main Site
At Drugs.com information is organized into many categories and accessible by browsing or search. For example, Drugs.com provides a pill identifier database*** similar to what's available on the mobile site. They also offer a phonetic and wildcard keyword search option when your not sure how to spell a drugs name. Also, Words or word stems can be truncated on the left side, right side, or both sides.
Finally, at the bottom of the homepage three (of many) of the information sources used on Drugs.com are listed with the date they were last updated. The sources are:
+ Micromedex
+ Cerner Multum
+ Wolters Kluwer
We're planning an extended overview of Drugs.com soon.
Source: FDA
*** On a related note, the National Library of Medicine is beta testing a a database named Pillbox that also assists in the identification of prescription drugs. Once the correct drug is found it links to the FDA and provides info and images of the label.
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