As a pharmacist for 56 years, Frank Muno has spent a lot of time identifying drug products.
Over the years and by searching pharmaceutical and the FDA websites, he built up his own database to identify drugs based on their imprints, logos, shape and markings.
Since this summer, that information is also available on a free mobile app to help other people identify loose pills and capsules.
PillID.com was first put on the web three years ago, explained Muno, 78. Working with partner Douglas McKalip on the technology side, they created the Apple and Android-compatible app this year.
Muno worked at Cook County Hospital and as a consulting pharmacist for many years before he started working at Advocate Sherman Hospital in 1991 as part of its “third shift” pharmacy, ensuring there was a pharmacist working at all hours at the Elgin hospital.
His career as a pharmacist may have started as a foregone conclusion for Muno. At the age of 10, he was “jerking sodas” at the family pharmacy in Rockford. He comes from a family that includes eight pharmacists — his father and uncle, brother and sister-in-law, and several cousins, are also in the industry.
But as a pharmacist, Muno was always interested in helping to educate clients about what they were taking and getting from their doctors.
“In the 1970s, it became important to educate patients on what the prescription was,” Muno said.
He created pocket-sized information sheets for 200 drugs and placed them on racks so patients could pick them up and read them while getting their prescriptions filled.
“I was about 30 years ahead of my time,” Muno said.
It wasn’t uncommon to get phone calls from patients trying to determine where a stray pill came from and what it was used for.
He remembers one call where the person on the phone — from a hospital ER — said they’d already called the poison control center and they couldn’t determine what the pill was. The caller said the marking looked like a backward number 7 with a slash above it.
When drawing it out, the marking looked like a “k.” Muno identified the drug as 30 mg. of codeine. The ER doctor working with the patient could now treat the overdose, he said.
In the FDA regulations, drug makers are expected to place identifying markers on their pills and capsules, Muno explained.
But there is nothing in the law that mandates those identifiers be unique.
In fact, there are 18 drugs that even if the pillid.com user enters its color, markings and other identifiers, there is no other way to determine what the drug is without talking to a pharmacist, Muno said.
One of the challenges of searching for drugs is that it is hard to type in a logo to get an identification. One of the logos in the database looks like a donkey with a ball on its head.
Muno ended up patenting the idea that the logo and alphanumeric coding on a drug product was a new way to identify those products 10 years ago, he said.
When an app — or website — user enters information about the drug product they are searching for, prompts appear to help them narrow down what the pill may be.
Once the pill has been identified, the site gives the user generic and brand names, strength, what it does and if it is a controlled substance.
Although there are other pill identification websites and apps, Muno believes his is superior for how it allows users to also identify logos.
Of the drugs now available, about 20 percent have a logo on the pill, he said.
Since going live with the app this summer, it has been downloaded about 20,000 times, and by 200-300 people a day, Muno said.
There are plans to continue improving the app, he said. Right now it is a free app, but plans are to add advertising to the site. A subscription service is also planned for hospitals, pharmacies, police departments and forensic labs.
Janelle Walker is a freelance reporter for The Courier-News.
