Look Up Your Meds On This Massive New Drug Database

Iodine, a new health start-up from a former Wired editor and Google engineer offers an easy-to-use database of drug information.

The database, which launched on Wednesday, uses Google surveys to get consumer information on a wide variety of both over-the-counter and prescription drugs. Users can search a specific drug from Aleve to Xanax and see how people generally feel about its efficacy, about the side effects from actual users, tradeoffs, comments from users, warnings, costs, and a readable versions of the drug’s package insert.

And the database will continue to grow. According to the New York Times, Iodine uses Google Consumer Surveys, of which they have 100,000 ones completed, and they add to their website every day. Iodine also uses data from clinical research, pharmacist surveys, adverse event reports made to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the National Average Drug Acquisition Cost (NADAC)–which reports the average wholesale price pharmacies pay for over 20,000 drugs.

Thomas Goetz, the former Wired editor and co-founder of Iodine told the Times that Iodine is developing the largest survey of American’s drug use and experiences which could not just help consumers but help impact policy.

The folks behind Iodine may have actually succeeded in making Big Data useable—and helpful.