The Medicine Quality Monitoring Globe: A public health intelligence system for collecting and curating reports of substandard and falsified medical products from publicly available Internet news media
6 affiliations
- 1LexiGraph corporation, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America
- 2Medicine Quality Research Group, NDM Centre for Global Health Research, Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
- 3Lao-Oxford-Mahosot Hospital-Wellcome Trust Research Unit (LOMWRU), Microbiology Laboratory, Mahosot Hospital, Vientiane, Lao People’s Democratic Republic
- 4Infectious Diseases Data Observatory, NDM Centre for Global Health Research, Nuffield Department of Medicine, University of Oxford, United Kingdom
- 5Centre for Tropical Medicine and Global Health, Nuffield Department of Clinical Medicine, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
- 6Department of Pharmacology, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
Abstract
The circulation of substandard and falsified (SF) medical products, including medicines, vaccines, and medical devices, continues to impact health of populations worldwide. Meanwhile, surveillance of SF products and data sharing are limited in most of the world, and incidents are rarely published in accessible databases. We describe here the Medicine Quality Monitoring Globe system (MQM Globe) for capturing, curating, characterising, and disseminating online media reports relating to SF products. The system consists of the curation environment and the Web application. Online reports are acquired from search engines, direct feeds, and targeted extraction, in five languages. They then pass a series of automated content characterisation steps to filter and label them by relevance, location, and product. Reports are then reviewed by a trained curator staff, before being made available through a visualisation Web application. Over the study period from July 2018 through December 2024, we identified 11,000 relevant distinct SF incidents, across a broad range of geography, products, and categories. The automated relevance classifier exhibited precision of 37%, recall 90%, and F1-score 52%, for English-language content. The information captured by the MQM Globe is publicly available and can help inform public health authorities as situations emerge. It is the only publicly available repository of open source intelligence specifically on SF medical products. It can be used as an informational tool to trigger intelligence-led activities across law enforcement, customs and Medicine Regulatory Authorities. Evidence before this study: The World Health Organization estimated that approximately 10.5% of medicines in low- and middle-income countries are substandard or falsified (SF). However, there is limited evidence on the extent of the problem, due to its nature, the weak regulation capacity in many poor-resourced countries, the complexity of global supply chains, and lack of awareness on the issue. To date there has been little analysis of publicly available online media reporting on events related to SF medical products. Added value of this study: This article describes the development and assessment of a publicly available online platform, the Medicine Quality Monitoring Globe, for monitoring news media and regulatory agency information related to SF medical products events. This active and timely system curates and organises reports in five languages. Implications of all the available evidence: This article introduces a tool that offers a new source of data for better understanding the global challenges related to SF medicinal products, and serves as an early warning system for incidents that may require investigation and action from regulatory authorities, health professionals, researchers and the public.
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BibTeX
@article{freifeld2026medicine,
title = {{The Medicine Quality Monitoring Globe: A public health intelligence system for collecting and curating reports of substandard and falsified medical products from publicly available Internet news media}},
author = {Clark C. Freifeld and Kerlijn Van Assche and Alberto Olliaro and Martial Battain and Inthapavanh Kitignavong and Vayouly Vidhamaly and Phonepasith Boupha and Kem Boutsamay and Ngan Thi Do and Konnie Bellingham and Viengsavanh Pimxayvong and Thitthiphone Olinh and Ana Rosado Olmo and Jingying Xu and Shan Jiang and Andrea Soult and Southida Insal and Philippe J. Guérin and Paul N. Newton and Céline Caillet},
journal = {PLOS Digital Health},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.1371/journal.pdig.0001648},
url = {https://journals.plos.org/digitalhealth/article?id=10.1371/journal.pdig.0001648},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - The Medicine Quality Monitoring Globe: A public health intelligence system for collecting and curating reports of substandard and falsified medical products from publicly available Internet news media
AU - Clark C. Freifeld
AU - Kerlijn Van Assche
AU - Alberto Olliaro
AU - Martial Battain
AU - Inthapavanh Kitignavong
AU - Vayouly Vidhamaly
AU - Phonepasith Boupha
AU - Kem Boutsamay
AU - Ngan Thi Do
AU - Konnie Bellingham
AU - Viengsavanh Pimxayvong
AU - Thitthiphone Olinh
AU - Ana Rosado Olmo
AU - Jingying Xu
AU - Shan Jiang
AU - Andrea Soult
AU - Southida Insal
AU - Philippe J. Guérin
AU - Paul N. Newton
AU - Céline Caillet
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/15
JO - PLOS Digital Health
DO - 10.1371/journal.pdig.0001648
UR - https://journals.plos.org/digitalhealth/article?id=10.1371/journal.pdig.0001648
AB - The circulation of substandard and falsified (SF) medical products, including medicines, vaccines, and medical devices, continues to impact health of populations worldwide. Meanwhile, surveillance of SF products and data sharing are limited in most of the world, and incidents are rarely published in accessible databases. We describe here the Medicine Quality Monitoring Globe system (MQM Globe) for capturing, curating, characterising, and disseminating online media reports relating to SF products. The system consists of the curation environment and the Web application. Online reports are acquired from search engines, direct feeds, and targeted extraction, in five languages. They then pass a series of automated content characterisation steps to filter and label them by relevance, location, and product. Reports are then reviewed by a trained curator staff, before being made available through a visualisation Web application. Over the study period from July 2018 through December 2024, we identified 11,000 relevant distinct SF incidents, across a broad range of geography, products, and categories. The automated relevance classifier exhibited precision of 37%, recall 90%, and F1-score 52%, for English-language content. The information captured by the MQM Globe is publicly available and can help inform public health authorities as situations emerge. It is the only publicly available repository of open source intelligence specifically on SF medical products. It can be used as an informational tool to trigger intelligence-led activities across law enforcement, customs and Medicine Regulatory Authorities. Evidence before this study: The World Health Organization estimated that approximately 10.5% of medicines in low- and middle-income countries are substandard or falsified (SF). However, there is limited evidence on the extent of the problem, due to its nature, the weak regulation capacity in many poor-resourced countries, the complexity of global supply chains, and lack of awareness on the issue. To date there has been little analysis of publicly available online media reporting on events related to SF medical products. Added value of this study: This article describes the development and assessment of a publicly available online platform, the Medicine Quality Monitoring Globe, for monitoring news media and regulatory agency information related to SF medical products events. This active and timely system curates and organises reports in five languages. Implications of all the available evidence: This article introduces a tool that offers a new source of data for better understanding the global challenges related to SF medicinal products, and serves as an early warning system for incidents that may require investigation and action from regulatory authorities, health professionals, researchers and the public.
SN - 2767-3170
ER -