Drugs.com is an online pharmaceutical encyclopedia that provides drug information for consumers and healthcare professionals, primarily in the United States. It self-describes its information as "accurate and independent" yet limited to being "for educational purposes only and is not intended for medical advice, diagnosis or treatment."
Website
The Drugs.com website is owned and operated by the Drugsite Trust, a privately held Trust administered by two
New Zealand
New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 List of islands of New Zealand, smaller islands. It is the ...
pharmacists, Karen Ann and Phillip James Thornton.
Operated on the
IBM Cloud, Drugs.com provides information on some 24,000 drugs, was visited by 50 million users per month in 2021, and has a
download
In computer networks, download means to ''receive'' data from a remote system, typically a server such as a web server, an FTP server, an email server, or other similar system. This contrasts with uploading, where data is ''sent to'' a remo ...
time of one second.
The site contains a library of reference information which includes content from
Cerner Multum,
Micromedex
Merative, formerly IBM Watson Health, is a standalone company as of 2022. Merative offers products and services that help clients facilitate medical research, clinical research, Real world evidence, and healthcare services, through the use of ar ...
,
Truven Health Analytics
Merative, formerly IBM Watson Health, is a standalone company as of 2022. Merative offers products and services that help clients facilitate medical research, clinical research, Real world evidence, and healthcare services, through the use of art ...
, U.S.
Food and Drug Administration
The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA or US FDA) is a federal agency of the Department of Health and Human Services. The FDA is responsible for protecting and promoting public health through the control and supervision of food ...
(FDA),
AHFS,
Harvard Health Publications,
Mayo Clinic, and Animalytics (a
veterinary
Veterinary medicine is the branch of medicine that deals with the prevention, management, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, disorder, and injury in animals. Along with this, it deals with animal rearing, husbandry, breeding, research on nutri ...
products database).
[
Drugs.com is certified by the ]TRUSTe TrustArc (formerly TRUSTe) is a privacy compliance technology company based in San Francisco, California. The company provides software and services to help corporations update their privacy management processes so they comply with government laws a ...
online privacy certification program and the HONcode of Health on the Net Foundation
Health On the Net Foundation (HON) is a Geneva, Switzerland-based not-for-profit organization which promotes a code of conduct for websites providing health information and offers certificates to those in compliance.
In September 2022, Health On ...
.
The Drugs.com encyclopedia contains drug information for consumers, a portal for drugs based on diseases, a health professionals database of drug monographs, a natural product
A natural product is a natural compound or substance produced by a living organism—that is, found in nature. In the broadest sense, natural products include any substance produced by life. Natural products can also be prepared by chemical sy ...
s database, and a poison control center.[ Drugs.com is not affiliated with any ]pharmaceutical companies
The pharmaceutical industry discovers, develops, produces, and markets drugs or pharmaceutical drugs for use as medications to be administered to patients (or self-administered), with the aim to cure them, vaccinate them, or alleviate sympto ...
.[
]
History
The domain Drugs.com was originally registered by Bonnie Neubeck in 1994. In 1999 at the height of the dotcom boom, Eric MacIver purchased an option to buy the domain from Neubeck. In August 1999, MacIver sold the domain at auction for US$823,666 to Venture Frogs, a startup incubator run by Tony Hsieh and Alfred Lin, best known for their involvement in LinkExchange and later Zappos.com. Venture Frogs sold the Drugs.com domain name to a private investor in June 2001, allowing Hsieh and Lin to focus on Zappos.com.
The Drugs.com website was officially launched in September 2001.[ In March 2008, Drugs.com announced the release of Mednotes — an online personal medication record application which connected to Google Health (On June 24, 2011 Google announced it was retiring Google Health on January 1, 2012).
In May 2010, U.S. FDA announced a collaboration with Drugs.com to distribute consumer health updates on the Drugs.com website and mobile platform.
In February 2016, comScore stated that Drugs.com was the sixth most popular health network receiving approximately 23 million visitors for the month, while Searchmetrics listed Drugs.com in the top 100 US websites for search visibility.
In April 2017, The Harris Poll listed Drugs.com as the Health Information Website Brand of the Year.]
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Drugs.Com
American medical websites
American companies established in 2001
Health care companies established in 2001
Internet properties established in 2001
Drugs