Former Yale University students are making it easier to spot counterfeit drugs.
Per TechCrunch, Adebayo Alonge, Amy Kao and Wei Lui launched healthcare startup RxAll in 2016. The inception of the company was in response to their own experience with counterfeit drugs. For Alonge, it was nearly fatal after he took a medicine that contained a dangerous amount of diazepam, while Kao’s experience left her hospitalized.
“I survived a 21-day coma in Nigeria 15 years ago. My co-founder, Amy, was hospitalized in Thailand after taking counterfeit medicine. And Wei lost a family member due to contaminated drugs,” Alonge told TechCrunch.
While students they were able to pick each other’s brains during a research and development project and found further information to validate their concerns. “100,000 Africans die from this problem every year. One million people die across the world from this problem,” Alonge mentioned.
This led to RxAll’s inaugural product RxScanner, a device powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning technology that can authenticate medicine for quality within 20 seconds for users. Per the company website, over 300 drug types have been tested with 99.9% accuracy, and over 100,000 tests have been conducted in Africa and Southeast Asia. The device has been used in 15 countries and has helped over 500,000 people, the company says.
“The vision is much broader now,” Alonge said, according to the article. “Now, we’re raising the standards of health care delivery across Africa.”
RxAll’s growth has been fueled by expanding its team, which now includes 50 employees. The company has also raised $3.15 million in seed and pre-seed funding from 2020 and 2021.
The founders are poised to close their Series A funding round as they are looking to extend their reach to Asia.
“Just knowing that we can prevent at least one person from having to go through the traumatic experiences that we went through — that’s very much the driving force,” Kao explained.
