Mapping the quality of medical products – evidence to inform strategy and policy change (360G-Wellcome-202935_Z_16_Z)

Poor quality medicines are major neglected public health threats that jeopardise the lives of millions. Data on their epidemiology, public health burden and impact are scattered and dislocated. Because of this, they are often misinterpreted, confounding counter-measures. A unified repository is desperately needed. We aim to create an open access data-sharing platform of valuable information on the quality of essential medicines. This platform will provide crucial evidence to inform policy and model the impact of poor quality medicines on patient outcomes and drug resistance. This is essential to inform concerted interventions to improve global medicine quality. The system will be designed for the principal target users - medicine regulatory authorities, international organisations, pharmacists, physicians and research groups. The project will build on the success of the WWARN Antimalarial Quality Surveyor that tabulates and maps the distribution of antimalarial quality across time and location. New databases and interactive maps will be generated for antibiotics, anti-retrovirals, vaccines and essential medicines for diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. These will collate information from formal and grey medical and lay literature, including internet data from optimized text-mining technology developed by HealthMap, providing urgently needed and timely intelligence on the extent of the medicine quality problem internationally.