We care about medication safety

Barb Marquardt, PharmID’s Director of Medication Control, spent over 15 years as a pharmacy manager at Seattle Children’s Hospital. Frustrated by the lack of certainty throughout the drug lifecycle, she knew first-hand the heavy burden placed on pharmacists to verify that medications are manufactured, stored and prepared correctly without real evidence.

Without knowing that a clear liquid is in fact the same medication and concentration as is indicated on the label, pharmacists like Barb are forced to trust a system that is susceptible to human error and tampering. Potential risks of getting it wrong include patient harm and even death.

Barb knew healthcare would be safer with more powerful tools, like the technologies that major pharmaceutical manufacturers use. Her husband, Brian, had been providing the technology to the pharmaceutical industry worldwide, from drug discovery to release QA. But, the traditional high cost and significant scientific operating complexity were barriers to overcome for use in healthcare. Still Barb couldn’t imagine a better answer to her problem than this technology, a Raman-based solution for medication verification.

Brian Marquardt Ph.D. is the Founder & CEO of MarqMetrix^®, a company that develops and manufactures high performance Raman spectroscopy instrumentation to identify the composition of many different types of molecules, including pharmaceuticals.  Started in 2012, MarqMetrix set out to make Raman accessible by reducing the cost and complexity while unlocking the analytical power that had previously been relegated to a small scientific community. After 5 years of development, and with over $10M invested, MarqMetrix had a small, easy-to-use, incredibly powerful Raman instrument suitable for the healthcare market.

In 2017, PharmID started to realize Barb’s dream and make healthcare safer by using core MarqMetrix Raman technology applied to medication verification.

PharmID empowers the healthcare industry with the first true molecular verification of medication, through packaging, non-destructively, and within seconds. Pharmacists no longer have to rely on a fallible system or trust labels. PharmID gives them molecular proof.