Sirum (YC W15) Recycles Unused Medicines to Save Money and Lives
opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com
opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com
I've always thought Medicare would jump at the idea of slashing its drug costs, but undertaking something like this is a crazy huge project.
It's more a matter of whether your country's regulator lets them in, and/or if you have enough retail competition to drive down prices close to their actual cost.
Be careful as some medications are very moisture-sensitive, light-sensitive or oxygen-sensitive.
For example: http://www.fda.gov/Drugs/DrugSafety/ucm248746.htm
And I don't mean food banks or soup kitchens. I mean the second McDonald's burger I was too stuffed to eat, or even the 8th leftover slice of pizza (as good as it is cold, somebody else could probably benefit from it more).
The logistics and legal challenges are mind-boggling, but there has to be a way.
They are very strict about what donations they'll accept. Even what's left in a buffet at the end of the night can't be donated. There's too much risk of contamination and spoilage. With your leftover burger there's no way to be confident you've practiced appropriate food care (refrigeration; how long you've kept it) even if you never unwrapped the thing -- let alone the slice of pizza that you probably touched with your bare hands and for all anyone knows is harboring flu virus or strep.
You're right, the liabilities make it unrealistic. How about buying a little bit less food and either donating the money you'd save to an org like City Harvest or buying a sandwich for the next homeless guy you pass on the street?
As I understand it botulism is mostly a concern in canning. If you kill most of the bacteria but the botulism bacteria is hardy and survives and produces it for months in the can.
You won't get that from eating spoiled buffet or even garbage.
I'm curious about a couple of things: Do you repackage the medicines before shipping them? Do you currently just handle tablets or also other forms (insulin for example, that may have to be refrigerated)?
We do donate a lot of injections, patches, and inhalations. Currently we are not able to do refrigerated medicine like insulin, but are working on cold-chain shipping so hope to offer that soon.
It doesn't seem to matter how serious the consequences of non-compliance are -- a bunch of donated organs fail because people (who had to wait a long time to get that organ) are non compliant with their meds.
It also doesn't seem to matter if people pay for their meds or not. Here's an old (2006) programme transcript talking about prescriptions in the NHS. http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/casenotes_tr_20060509.sh...
> In 2004 prescribed medicines cost the NHS more than £8 billion in England alone, yet 4 out of 10 people prescribed medicines by their doctor don't take them regularly enough to derive any benefit. I'll be finding out about the financial and social costs of not taking medicines properly, and what can be done to stem the wastage.
[...]
> And poor compliance - or non-concordance to give it its politically correct name - isn't just a problem for drug safety campaigners like Professor Shakir. Studies have shown that as many as 9 out 10 cases of rejection in people who have had kidney or heart transplants happen solely because they don't take their pills properly. And if they don't follow instructions, after all they have been through, then what chance do the rest of us have.
> About 20% of the population take their medicines properly and they get the full benefit. Another 40% take their medicines well enough to get some benefit - which is good. But 40% of people with diabetes and asthma and schizophrenia, high blood pressure, don't take their medicines at all or they take them so erratically as to get no benefit and some harm.
> Yes, I've been doing my sums on this and these are approximate figures but last year UK GPs issued approximately 1 billion prescriptions, costing approximately £12 billion. If 40% of that is indeed wasted and we are fairly sure it is, that means that non-compliers are wasting somewhere around £5 billion per annum, that's eight times the current hospital overspend that's causing so much fuss in the media.
> And I have to emphasise - it's the same in the USA, Sweden, Australia - any country where it's been researched.
The English NHS has very strict rules and they will not take back meds. You can hand meds to your pharmacist but those get destroyed. This is supposedly to protect the chain - to prevent counterfeit goods getting into the supply. (I'm not sure I understand that reasoning but I've heard it said more than once).