The National Unused & Expired Medicines Registry
To determine the public health and patient safety impact of UEMs, Community Medical
Foundation began collecting data since 2005 and presented our findings at the annual
International Symposium on Safe Medicine. With the vast amount of information on
returned medicines, we set up the first national registry for this unique data set
following and supporting important benchmarks in drug policy, such as the international
Athens Declaration.
Based on the framework of the Community of Competence, the National Unused & Expired
Medicines Registry was created for research purposes. Standardized data collection
protocol and instrument were form by consensus of the Maine Benzodiazepine Study
Group committee to include five basic variables: drug name, dosage, amount returned,
reason for return and zip code.
From the five basic variables, other information was derived: therapeutic class,
drug characteristics, average wholesale cost, environmental risk and hazard class,
and demographic data.
Today, more than 38 sets of UEM data from various drug take-back programs around
the country have been submitted for review and entry into the National Registry with
more than 30,000 returned medicines and pill count of nearly 2.5 million. A conservative
estimated rate of waste of 40% was calculated for prescription medicines returned
by patients. Leading categories of UEMs were central nervous system agents, psychotherapeutic
agents and cardiovascular agents.
For more information about the National Unused & Expired Medicines Registry, please
contact us.
