MyPharmaceutical: an interactive proof of concept

Abstract

With the rise of health awareness, pharmaceutical and cosmetic products should be verified to protect ourselves from health risks. MyPharmaceutical is a proof-of-concept proposed to provide a mobile application for users to carry out product verification and reporting and a web application for administrative purposes. The data on the registered pharmaceutical and cosmetic products were extracted from national pharmaceutical regulatory agency (NPRA) website. MyPharmaceutical mobile application provides functionalities such as searching the registered product, bookmarking products, reporting products, and tracking report status. The mobile application also implemented a barcode scanner feature to provide ease of product verification. A named entity recognition algorithm is applied with the NLP.js library to provide an improved product search feature for the users, where products can be searched with multiple search criteria in a single input. The web application is proposed to support the mobile application, where the NPRA data admins and officers can manage reported products, publish announcements, verify product data, and utilize the analytic dashboard. The system proposed is expected to provide ease of product verification and reporting to assist the public in choosing safe registered products and a platform for NPRA to manage data and deliver information to the users.