Halting Mediradar

Mediradar: The Medicine Price Checker I Had to Pause (For Now)

Right off the bat, let me tell you about the core behind Mediradar: medicines are expensive in Mexico (and I’d asume in more countries as well); and they tend to fluctuate a lot.

The idea was simple as well: what if you could check the price of any medicine in Mexico, see how the price has changed over time, and even get alerts when the price drops? No more guessing, no more overpaying, just a clean dashboard with all the info you need.

So, I built it. Data extraction, storage, visualization, front end with search bar, alerts, rate limiting… the whole shebang.

Mediradar would grab the prices and titles of medicines from different pharmacies, keep a history of price changes, and let you set up alerts for when your meds got cheaper. I wanted it to be the go-to tool for anyone who needs to buy medicine regularly (which, let’s be honest, is most of us at some point).

But troubles ensued.

Turns out, there are some pretty heavy regulations around publishing this kind of data. Pharmacies have their own rules, and scraping or sharing their prices isn’t as straightforward as I hoped. I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes (or get into legal trouble), so I’m hitting pause on Mediradar for now.

What’s next? I’m reaching out to all the pharmacies to get their official permission to publish this project. If they’re cool with it, Mediradar will be back. If not, well, at least it’s a good learning experience and one more story to tell.

If you’re interested in this kind of thing or have ideas (or contacts at pharmacies, lol), hit me up. I’d love to see Mediradar help people save money and make smarter choices about their health.

P.S. I share more of my projects, wins, fails, and random thoughts on Twitter. Come say hi!