Assessing Trustworthiness of Internet Pharmacies with an Internet Browser Extension

Area of Science:

• Pharmaceutical Sciences
• Health Informatics
• Consumer Safety

Background:

• The proliferation of online pharmacies, both legal and illegal, increases consumer risk of acquiring substandard or falsified medications.
• Identifying legitimate online pharmacies is crucial for public health and patient safety.

Purpose of the Study:

• To quantify the prevalence of verified, not recommended, and not verified pharmacy websites encountered through online searches.
• To compare keyword effectiveness in surfacing not recommended versus verified pharmacy websites.

Main Methods:

• Development of an internet browser extension to classify search results based on National Association Boards of Pharmacy (NABP) lists.
• Automated searching using 131 keywords and an application programming interface (API) over a 4-week period.
• Classification of search results into verified, not recommended, and not verified categories.

Main Results:

• An average of 4.3% of search results were classified as verified or not recommended over the study period.
• A notable 3:1 ratio of not recommended to verified pharmacy websites was observed.
• Keywords like "shipped" and "cheap" were associated with a higher proportion of not recommended search results.

Conclusions:

• The developed browser extension can assist consumers in identifying safe online pharmacy search results.
• This tool has the potential to combat illegal online pharmacies (IOPs), enhance patient safety, and improve access to legitimate medications.