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By Brandon Roberts / ProPublica
ProPublica on Friday published never-before-released data connecting generic drugs to the factories that manufactured them. The data powers Rx Inspector, our groundbreaking tool that allows you to find the factories where your generic drugs were made and their Food and Drug Administration inspection track records.
The data, which ProPublica created by linking several FDA datasets, has never been made available by the agency before. It will allow anyone to connect prescriptions to the facilities they were manufactured in by linking National Drug Code numbers to FDA Establishment Identifiers of drug manufacturing facilities.
You can access the data on Github here.
Academic researchers said the data would contribute significantly to research evaluating the quality and supply of generic drugs.
“This bypasses an incredibly time-consuming barrier for people who want to study drugs and anything to do with manufacturing,” said John Gray, a professor at the Ohio State University.
Gray and his team are working to assign generic drugs quality scores based on risk. The goal is to help government purchasers, including the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, buy medications based on quality, not just cost.
The data also provides some basic information about each facility, like the country it’s in and the name of the company that registered it.
The methods we used to link the FDA’s drug and facility identifiers are complex, and are laid out in our full methodology. To obtain some of the data, ProPublica had to sue the agency.
We know that much of what is represented here is likely incomplete. It is possible the FDA’s information is not up-to-date because, for example, one company acquired another or moved its manufacturing to a different location. However, we believe this is an important first step in shedding light on a process that the agency and drugmakers have sought to keep secret from consumers.
We are releasing this data under a Creative Commons license, meaning you may use it for noncommercial purposes as long as you attribute ProPublica and link back to Rx Inspector.
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