Drugs.com is an online pharmaceutical encyclopedia which provides drug information for consumers and healthcare professionals primarily in the USA.

History

The domain Drugs.com was originally registered by Bonnie Neubeck in 1994 . In 1999 at the height of the dotcom boom, Eric MacIver purchased an option to buy the domain from Neubeck . In Aug 1999, MacIver sold the domain at auction for US$823,456 to Venture Frogs, a startup incubator run by Tony Hsieh

Tony Hsieh

Tony Hsieh is the CEO of online shoe and clothing shop Zappos.com. Prior to joining Zappos, Hsieh co-founded and sold the internet advertising network LinkExchange to Microsoft in 1999 for $265 million.-Early life:...

 and Alfred Lin, best known for their involvement in LinkExchange

LinkExchange

LinkExchange was a popular internet advertising cooperative, originally known as Internet Link Exchange or ILE.It was founded in March 1996 by 23-year-old Harvard graduates Tony Hsieh and Sanjay Madan. Ali Partovi later joined them as a third partner...

 and later Zappos.com

Zappos.com

Zappos.com is an online shoe and apparel shop currently based in Henderson, Nevada.In July 2009, the company announced it would be acquired by Amazon.com in an all-stock deal worth about $1.2 billion. Since its founding in 1999, Zappos has grown to be the largest online shoe store.-Inception:Zappos...

 . Venture Frogs sold the drugs.com domain name to a private investor in June 2001, allowing Hsieh & Lin to focus on Zappos.com .The Drugs.com website is owned and operated by the Drugsite Trust. The Drugsite Trust is a privately held Trust administered by two New Zealand Pharmacists. The Drugs.com website is hosted in a data center located in Virginia, USA.

Contact address:
Drugsite Trust
25 Apollo Drive, Suite A
North Shore
Auckland 0632
New Zealand

Website

The Drugs.com website was officially launched in September 2001 . The site contains a library of reference information which includes content from Cerner Multum

Cerner

Cerner Corporation is an international health care information technology corporation that specializes in providing complete systems for hospitals and other medical organizations to manage and integrate all electronic medical records, computerized physician order entry , and financial...

, Micromedex from Thomson Reuters

Thomson Reuters

Thomson Reuters Corporation is a provider of information for the world's businesses and professionals and is created by the Thomson Corporation's purchase of Reuters Group on 17 April 2008. Thomson Reuters is headquartered at 3 Times Square, New York City, USA...

, Wolters Kluwer Health, U.S. Food and Drug Administration

Food and Drug Administration

The Food and Drug Administration is an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, one of the United States federal executive departments...

 (FDA), Physicians' Desk Reference

Physicians' Desk Reference

The Physicians' Desk Reference is a commercially published compilation of manufacturers' prescribing information on prescription drugs, updated annually...

, A.D.A.M

A.D.A.M., Inc.

A.D.A.M., Inc. was a NASDAQ-traded public company based in Atlanta, Georgia, that provided consumer health information and benefits technology products to healthcare organizations, employers, consumers, and educational institutions...

., Stedmans

Stedman's Medical Dictionary

Stedman's Medical Dictionary is designed in a dictionary format to provide the language of medicine, nursing and the allied health profession. It is made up of terms, images and appendices. It can be used to look up medical terms, abbreviation, acronyms, measurements and more...

, AHFS

American Society of Health-System Pharmacists

The American Society of Health-System Pharmacists is a professional organization representing the interests of pharmacists who practice in hospitals, health maintenance organizations, long-term care facilities, home care, and other components of health care systems.As of 2009, ASHP has 36,000...

, Harvard Health Publications

Harvard Medical School

Harvard Medical School is the graduate medical school of Harvard University. It is located in the Longwood Medical Area of the Mission Hill neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts....

, North American Compendiums, PharmaLive

Med Ad News

Med Ad News is a magazine, delivering pharmaceutical business and marketing news. The magazine was started in 1982 and is published by Canon Communications, formerly Engel Publishing Partners...

, & Healthday

HealthDay

HealthDay's health news service is a division of ScoutNews, LLC, a private company founded in 2001 and based in Norwalk, Connecticut.HealthDay specializes in producing and licensing daily health news on the Internet for and The company's custom content division provides customized health articles...

 .

In March 2008, Drugs.com announced the release of Mednotes - an online personal medication record application which connected to Google Health

Google Health

Google Health is a personal health information centralization service by Google introduced in 2008 and announced for withdrawal in 2011...

(On June 24, 2011 Google announced it is retiring Google Health in January 1, 2012).

In May 2010, U.S. FDA announced a collaboration with Drugs.com to distribute consumer health updates on the Drugs.com website and mobile platform .