by Justina Hurley
Two great websites that give information on medications and provide “official” data as well as patient testimonials.
There are many good medications that help with many conditions. However all medications have the potential to affect an individual in a variety of ways, so when taking any medication it’s wise to inform yourself about what you are taking and what the most common or likely side effects might be.
We’re looking at two sites, Iodine.org and RxISK.com which both provide a lot of really useful information on many drugs.
www.rxisk.org v www.iodine.com
Both sites are great and should be in anyone’s bookmarks.
The good thing about both these sites is that they include patient experiences. This is essentially anecdotal information, but very useful for anyone considering a medication or anyone already taking a medication and experiencing symptoms that may not be listed in the side effects section in the medication packaging.
But do bear in mind that patient stories will contain a natural bias, as it is more usual for people to contact a website and report a bad experience with a medication than it is to report a good experience, so most patient testimonials will talk about bad effects.
1. www.rxisk.org
The perspective at Rxisk is that drug interactions are increasingly leading to serious and sometimes fatal reactions and many of these reactions are underreported making it hard for experts to estimate how a drug is actually performing. Rxisk wants more information, earlier reporting and independent data gathering. They say:
“RxISK is the first free, independent website where patients, doctors, and pharmacists can research prescription drugs and easily report a drug side effect — identifying problems and possible solutions earlier than is currently happening.”
Rxisk offers a reporting option when a drug side effect is submitted where they can automatically submit the report to your county regulator. Your personal details are required so that your country regulator can follow up with you if required. They guarantee however that your personal information is never released to any other agencies for sale or otherwise. They also offer a report on whatever drug you are considering that you can print and bring to discuss with your doctor.
The information on Rxisk is detailed and is not just from patients but also from medical databases.
Also Rxisk provides excellent information in separate sections on drug interactions, drugs that have been known to cause suicidal thoughts/suicide, drugs that can cause violence, symptoms on stopping /drug withdrawal for a wide variety of drugs and even a section on how drugs could affect your skin and hair.
Rxisk is a little more formal and has a serious agenda behind it, in that it wants to improve drug safety by gathering patient testimonials and reporting drug reactions to country regulatory bodies so that if something has been missed in clinical trials, but is repeatedly showing up in patient testimonials, then it can be addressed and that drug reassessed or made safer.
Overall
Excellent and very trustworthy site, suitable for patients and medical researchers, global focus.
2. www.iodine.com
The perspective at Iodine is to empower people to make choices about their medication. Like Rxisk they value real-life testimonials and see this information as equally important to what comes from research and clinical trials. Whereas Rxisk is seeking reports from the public, Iodine surveys as target group. In their initial launch persiod for example, they surveyed over 100,000 Americans about their medications using Google Consumer Surveys.
They say:
Iodine’s mission is to build tools that help people understand their health and improve their healthcare choices. We do this by combining clinical research with real life experience, creating better information that can yield new insights. We believe Iodine can reduce people’s fear and uncertainty about their health, enhance the dialogue between people and their care providers, and create valuable opportunities for better care.
Iodine is still developing so they don’t have the breadth of information that Rxisk has.
Iodine.com has a very clean design and a very accessible, easy to view interface. For the drugs that it has already researched, it offers good information on the upsides and downsides, as well as alternative medications for the same condition.
It is more patient friendly in some ways and because it is concerned only with providing the information to patients and not official reporting as well, it means readers can just add to survey information by clicking “me too” buttons in the infographics (like the one here used to show survey responses to Zoloft):
Overall:
One to watch, patient friendly, more US based, not as useful for medical research.
Health Aware 