What is the name of your organization?
Oummal
What is the name of your solution?
MedLeb
Provide a one-line summary or tagline for your solution.
MedLeb digitizes the pharmaceutical system to combat drug shortages, counterfeit medications & empower patients through verified, real-time data.
In what city, town, or region is your solution team headquartered?
Zgharta, Lebanon
In what country is your solution team headquartered?
Lebanon
What type of organization is your solution team?
Nonprofit
Film your elevator pitch.
What specific problem are you solving?
Antibiotic misuse is prevalent in Lebanon, with 68.3% of individuals reporting antibiotic use 1–3 times annually and 22.4% engaging in self-medication without prescriptions. An estimated 30–50% of antibiotics are dispensed without physician oversight, and 25% of households store leftover antibiotics. Quality assessments revealed that 100% of tested ciprofloxacin generics failed United States Pharmacopeia (USP) specifications, and tested amoxicillin-clavulanic acid formulations exceeded clavulanic acid limits. Counterfeit medicines were detected in 4% of Mount Lebanon households and 12% in the Bekaa region; up to 35% of drugs may be counterfeit nationwide. Regulatory oversight is weak, operating under outdated 1985 GMP standards. A Beirut survey found 37% of pharmacists willing to dispense antibiotics without prescriptions due to consumer pressure and inadequate enforcement.
Surveillance of antibiotic distribution and quality is fragmented, lacking national tracking systems and product authentication tools. Lebanon’s economic crisis has intensified reliance on black-market and donated pharmaceuticals, compromising safety. Manual inventory systems, poor data integration, and minimal border controls have facilitated widespread smuggling and substitution with falsified products. These deficiencies, compounded by a collapsing healthcare infrastructure and increasing antimicrobial resistance (AMR), particularly affect vulnerable populations such as refugees and the stateless.
What is your solution?
MedLeb is a comprehensive pharmaceutical digitization ecosystem composed of three interconnected applications: (1) MedLeb Patient Guide (PG), (2) MedLeb Pharmacy Service (PS), and (3) MedLeb Healthcare Provider (HP). These platforms are designed to enhance transparency, safety, and accountability across the medication lifecycle in Lebanon.
MedLeb PG empowers individuals to search, compare, and verify medications using the CheckMate feature, which scans the 2D barcode on drug packaging to confirm regulatory compliance. If the medication is not present in the national database or its details are inconsistent, the system alerts the user to potential falsification or smuggling.
The MedLeb PS platform is used by the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) and licensed importers to record and manage drug data across five modules: registration, pricing, importation, inspection, and distribution. This data is updated monthly in the centralized database.
When patients scan a medication using MedLeb PG, the app cross-references the barcode with the updated records from MedLeb PS. If the drug has been legally registered, priced, and inspected, it is verified as authentic. This integrated system enhances community-level drug safety, reduces counterfeit circulation, and strengthens regulatory oversight.
Who does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives?
MedLeb directly serves patients, pharmacists, healthcare providers, and government regulators in Lebanon, with a focus on vulnerable and underserved populations, including low-income individuals, people with chronic illnesses, and those living in areas with limited healthcare infrastructure.
Patients in Lebanon often face unsafe and inequitable access to medications due to counterfeit drugs, smuggled imports, price inflation, and a lack of transparency around drug availability and quality. The current system lacks a reliable, patient-accessible source of medication information, exposing users to health risks and financial exploitation.
MedLeb addresses these gaps by empowering patients through its Patient Guide (PG) app, which offers real-time medication verification, price comparison, intake reminders, and pharmacy locator tools. Its CheckMate feature enables users to instantly validate a drug’s legal status and authenticity via barcode scan. MedLeb PG offers offline access, bilingual Arabic-English support, and barcode scanning to simplify drug verification without needing to type complex medication names.
Pharmacists and doctors benefit from digital tools for prescriptions, inventory, and treatment safety, while the Ministry of Public Health gains a secure, centralized system for regulating the pharmaceutical supply chain.
