An incredible idea. Very proud to see new sustainable models for nonprofits going through YC, especially ones that actually save lives.

Thanks. We do think financial sustainability is one of the most important ways for nonprofits to keep focused on their mission and scale their impact.

What do you think about the idea of a non-profit generic drug manufacturer?

I've always thought Medicare would jump at the idea of slashing its drug costs, but undertaking something like this is a crazy huge project.

If you can overcome the high capital costs, I think it could be very successful. You may want to check out One World Health which is a nonprofit drug development organization that does incredible work as well.

Generic drugs are fairly cheap.

It's more a matter of whether your country's regulator lets them in, and/or if you have enough retail competition to drive down prices close to their actual cost.

The website says "unopened" donations are accepted - what is this limited to? Does that mean if I have 12 malaria pills in an open container (for a 10 day regimen) I can't donate the leftover 2?

A lot of the medication at these institutions are bubble packed, so you could donate the last 2 in those cases. Thankfully this is the vast majority of our volume right now. If it's an open bottle it would depend on the type of donor whether it could be re-sealed. For example, a pharmacy could.

> If it's an open bottle it would depend on the type of donor whether it could be re-sealed.

Be careful as some medications are very moisture-sensitive, light-sensitive or oxygen-sensitive.

For example: http://www.fda.gov/Drugs/DrugSafety/ucm248746.htm

Incredible idea! I wish we could do this for food, as well.

And I don't mean food banks or soup kitchens. I mean the second McDonald's burger I was too stuffed to eat, or even the 8th leftover slice of pizza (as good as it is cold, somebody else could probably benefit from it more).

The logistics and legal challenges are mind-boggling, but there has to be a way.

There's an organization in NYC called City Harvest that "rescues" food every night that restaurants, supermarkets, farmers markets, bakeries, and the like are unable to sell, and distributes it by the truckload to soup kitchens and food pantries. Hundreds of tons every week.

They are very strict about what donations they'll accept. Even what's left in a buffet at the end of the night can't be donated. There's too much risk of contamination and spoilage. With your leftover burger there's no way to be confident you've practiced appropriate food care (refrigeration; how long you've kept it) even if you never unwrapped the thing -- let alone the slice of pizza that you probably touched with your bare hands and for all anyone knows is harboring flu virus or strep.

You're right, the liabilities make it unrealistic. How about buying a little bit less food and either donating the money you'd save to an org like City Harvest or buying a sandwich for the next homeless guy you pass on the street?

If only food irradiation was less restricted, perhaps they could irradiate everything and at least be assured its safe even if it was spoiled.

IIRC, radiation doesn't help with botulism, which is a chemical rather than a virus or bacterium, and which is incredibly toxic.

It kills the bacteria that produces it, but that is a good point. Still, it might be possible to test for it, and its unlikely that restraunt food contains it just from getting spoiled.

As I understand it botulism is mostly a concern in canning. If you kill most of the bacteria but the botulism bacteria is hardy and survives and produces it for months in the can.

You won't get that from eating spoiled buffet or even garbage.

Very cool, I love this new stream of nonprofits from YC.

I'm curious about a couple of things: Do you repackage the medicines before shipping them? Do you currently just handle tablets or also other forms (insulin for example, that may have to be refrigerated)?

Most of the medication is donated in its original packaging. In most states the recipient can then repackage so the patient gets a normal amber vial just like any other source.

We do donate a lot of injections, patches, and inhalations. Currently we are not able to do refrigerated medicine like insulin, but are working on cold-chain shipping so hope to offer that soon.

I didn't realise the situation with throwing out medicines was so bad in the US. For comparison, pharmacies in Australia have always been a place where you would return unused medicine, where it is destroyed (some medicine just cannot be reused), reused or shipped to developing countries (used to be able to send recently-expired medicine that was still effective but I think I read this was no longer the case)

It's refreshing to hear that at least one country seems to have solved this problem. Here in the US we have a whole industry of Reverse Distributors (Stericycle, Genco, INMAR) whose job is to sort and then incinerate unused medicine.

About half of all medication is taken incorrectly.

It doesn't seem to matter how serious the consequences of non-compliance are -- a bunch of donated organs fail because people (who had to wait a long time to get that organ) are non compliant with their meds.

It also doesn't seem to matter if people pay for their meds or not. Here's an old (2006) programme transcript talking about prescriptions in the NHS. http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/casenotes_tr_20060509.sh...

> In 2004 prescribed medicines cost the NHS more than £8 billion in England alone, yet 4 out of 10 people prescribed medicines by their doctor don't take them regularly enough to derive any benefit. I'll be finding out about the financial and social costs of not taking medicines properly, and what can be done to stem the wastage.

[...]

> And poor compliance - or non-concordance to give it its politically correct name - isn't just a problem for drug safety campaigners like Professor Shakir. Studies have shown that as many as 9 out 10 cases of rejection in people who have had kidney or heart transplants happen solely because they don't take their pills properly. And if they don't follow instructions, after all they have been through, then what chance do the rest of us have.

> About 20% of the population take their medicines properly and they get the full benefit. Another 40% take their medicines well enough to get some benefit - which is good. But 40% of people with diabetes and asthma and schizophrenia, high blood pressure, don't take their medicines at all or they take them so erratically as to get no benefit and some harm.

> Yes, I've been doing my sums on this and these are approximate figures but last year UK GPs issued approximately 1 billion prescriptions, costing approximately £12 billion. If 40% of that is indeed wasted and we are fairly sure it is, that means that non-compliers are wasting somewhere around £5 billion per annum, that's eight times the current hospital overspend that's causing so much fuss in the media.

> And I have to emphasise - it's the same in the USA, Sweden, Australia - any country where it's been researched.

The English NHS has very strict rules and they will not take back meds. You can hand meds to your pharmacist but those get destroyed. This is supposedly to protect the chain - to prevent counterfeit goods getting into the supply. (I'm not sure I understand that reasoning but I've heard it said more than once).

How does one verify that the returned/donated drug is actually that drug?

State laws have a lot of safeguards built-in to ensure all the medicine is safe. For example, all the medicine donated must be checked by a pharmacist to ensure that it is unopened, unexpired, from an eligible licensed facility. We also use a bar code scanner to enter and identify the medicine before it is sent.

What an awesome initiative!

Thanks! We are honored to be one of the non-profits in YC

Thanks Elen!