About PlainMeds

Our Mission

Medication information should not require a medical degree to understand. PlainMeds takes official FDA drug label data and translates it into clear, plain English that anyone can read. No jargon, no paywalls -- just straightforward facts about the medications you take every day.

We believe that understanding your medications is a basic right, not a privilege. When you know what a drug does, what side effects to watch for, and how it interacts with other medications, you can have better conversations with your doctor and make more informed decisions about your health.

Our Data Sources

Every piece of information on PlainMeds comes from official, publicly available FDA databases. We do not make up content or rely on unverified sources.

• FDA Drug Labels (SPL) -- The structured product labeling that manufacturers submit to the FDA. This is the same information your pharmacist reads, covering indications, dosage, warnings, contraindications, and adverse reactions.
• FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS) -- Real-world reports of adverse events submitted by healthcare professionals and patients. We use this data to show which side effects are reported most frequently.
• FDA Drug Enforcement Reports -- Official recall and enforcement actions. We track active recalls so you can check whether any of your medications have been affected.

Our Methodology

We use editorial plain-language simplification to translate complex medical language into content written at approximately an 8th-grade reading level. Every drug profile is generated from the original FDA source data, then reviewed for accuracy. We aim to preserve all clinically important details while removing unnecessary complexity.

Drug interaction data is extracted from FDA label cross-references, and adverse event statistics come directly from FAERS report counts. We do not editorialize or add medical opinions -- what you see is what the FDA data says, just in simpler words.

Important Disclaimer

PlainMeds is an informational resource, not a substitute for professional medical advice. We do not diagnose conditions, recommend treatments, or suggest changes to your medication regimen. Always consult your doctor, pharmacist, or other qualified healthcare professional before making any decisions about your medications.

Data Currency

PlainMeds currently displays data from openFDA drug label data (2025 release) and FAERS adverse event reports through Q4 2025. Drug labels are updated by the FDA continuously as manufacturers submit revised labeling — we pull the latest versions from DailyMed/openFDA and refresh our database quarterly. FAERS data is published quarterly by the FDA with a typical 3-6 month reporting lag.

FDA Enforcement Reports (recalls) are updated weekly. We incorporate new enforcement actions within 7 days of FDA publication. Our update schedule ensures PlainMeds reflects the most current publicly available safety information.

Data Limitations

Drug interaction information and adverse event data have inherent limitations. Clinical trial data reflects controlled study populations; real-world experiences may differ. FAERS reports are voluntary and subject to reporting bias. Never modify a prescribed treatment based solely on information from this or any website.

Editorial Independence

Content on PlainMeds is compiled by our editorial team from official source data. Raw data from the FDA — including openFDA drug labels, DailyMed structured product labeling, FAERS adverse event reports, and FDA Enforcement Reports — is transformed into readable drug profiles by our automated pipeline, then validated against the source before publication. The PlainMeds editorial team, operating under Kiznis Studio, is responsible for editorial standards, methodology, and corrections. No AI-generated content is published without a human review step that checks the plain-language summary against the underlying FDA record.

We do not accept payment, sponsorship, or promoted placement from manufacturers, pharmacies, healthcare providers, or any drug-related entity. Our only revenue source is contextual display advertising served by Google AdSense — advertisers do not influence which drugs we cover, how adverse event data is summarized, or how drug profiles are ranked, and they do not receive preferential placement.

Editorial Team

PlainMeds is published by PlainMeds Editorial, a small independent team that builds public-data portals so that government records remain accessible to the people they describe. Our editorial work on drug labeling and adverse-event data is led by editors with backgrounds in pharmacovigilance reporting, FDA regulatory analysis, and clinical informatics — disciplines that combine to vet what FDA's openFDA endpoints publish, surface its limitations (FAERS reporting bias, label revision lag, variation in MedWatch submissions), and translate dense Structured Product Labeling (SPL) and FAERS coding into language a patient or caregiver can use.

We do not employ practicing clinicians, pharmacists, or drug-safety officers, and we do not publish original medical advice. Instead, our editorial standard is verification, citation, and transparency: every label snippet, ingredient breakdown, FAERS adverse-event count, NDC code, and recall notice we surface is traceable to an FDA dataset, and every methodology decision (how we deduplicate FAERS reports, how we match labels to active ingredients, how we time-align across SPL revisions) is documented at /methodology. When FDA data has known shortcomings — for example, FAERS is a passive reporting system and counts cannot be used to compute incidence — we say so on the page where the data appears, not buried in a footer.

Editorial questions, fact corrections, and source-attribution issues should go to hello@plainmeds.com. We are accountable for what we publish: every correction we make is reflected in the next data refresh. PlainMeds does not accept paid placement, sponsored listings, manufacturer co-marketing, or any incentive that would compromise the neutrality of how drugs and ingredients appear on the site. For broader context on FDA labeling and pharmacovigilance, see also our primary sources PlainPharmaWatch, PlainRecalls, and PlainHealth.

Contact

Questions, corrections, or feedback? Email us at hello@plainmeds.com.

We welcome:

• Questions about data sources or methodology
• Reports of apparent data errors or anomalies
• Suggestions for additional drug information or features
• Media and research inquiries

PlainMeds is published by ", a data intelligence company that builds free, public-interest data portals. We transform complex government datasets into accessible, searchable resources for researchers, journalists, policymakers, and the public.