Rx Abroad

Know what to ask for, wherever you land. — live at https://rxabroad.vercel.app

Every drug has one international name (its INN) and a different local brand name almost everywhere you go. Rx Abroad covers 82 common medicines across 15 destinations (India is hidden for now). Search a brand, a generic name, or a country to see what to ask for at the pharmacy counter and whether it's OTC, prescription-only, pharmacist-only, controlled, or banned.

Destinations: US, UK, Canada, Germany, France, Mexico, Ethiopia, Japan, Vietnam, Singapore, Morocco, Portugal, Türkiye, Italy, Spain. (India's entries are kept but hidden.)

Features

• Search and filter. Search by brand ("Claritin"), generic ("paracetamol"), or country ("Ethiopia"), and narrow results with the country chips. Matches are highlighted.
• Browse by symptom. In the travel essentials view, pick what you need it for (fever, traveler's diarrhea, motion sickness, 21 in all) to see only the medicines sold for it. Typing a symptom in the search box works too.
• Shareable links. The search, selected countries and symptom are kept in the URL (/?q=claritin&c=JP,FR, /?s=cough&c=VN).
• Drug, country and symptom pages. Each drug, country and symptom has its own statically generated page (/drug/paracetamol, /country/japan, /symptom/travelers-diarrhea), with its own title and description for search engines. There is also a sitemap.
• My meds travel card (/my-meds). Pick your medicines and a destination to get a printable one-page card with the local name to ask for and any cautions. Your list is saved only in your browser.
• Confidence markers and sources. † means general knowledge that isn't registry-checked, and ? means unconfirmed. A check mark means the entry was confirmed against that country's official medicines registry. Use "Show sources" to see the citation links.
• US name lookup. A search that matches nothing in the formulary is looked up in RxNorm, so "Zestoretic" answers "lisinopril + hydrochlorothiazide" and links to the medicines we cover.
• Light, dark, or automatic theme, and a print / save-as-PDF option.

Development

npm install
npm run dev        # http://localhost:3000
npm run build      # every drug, country and symptom page is statically generated
npm run lint

Built with Next.js 16 (App Router), React 19, Tailwind CSS v4 and shadcn/ui (Radix base, Nova preset). The "passport" theme lives in src/app/globals.css: color tokens for light (passport paper) and dark (night flight), rubber-stamp status styles, and print rules. Add more shadcn components with npx shadcn@latest add <name>. There's no backend.

Accounts and saved trips (Clerk + Neon)

Sign-in uses Clerk (@clerk/nextjs, themed with @clerk/ui's shadcn theme). Signed-in travelers can save trips (medicines + ordered destinations) to a Neon Postgres database and open them on any device; while a trip is open, changes autosave. Without an account the travel card still works, stored in the browser only.

• Clerk keys (NEXT_PUBLIC_CLERK_PUBLISHABLE_KEY, CLERK_SECRET_KEY) and the Neon DATABASE_URL come from .env.local locally and from Vercel environment variables when deployed. Never expose CLERK_SECRET_KEY to client code.
• src/proxy.ts runs clerkMiddleware(); routes are public, and the trip server actions check the user.
• Schema lives in db/migrations/*.sql; apply with npm run db:migrate (runs each file once). trips.user_id is the Clerk user id (user_...). User profiles stay in Clerk (not copied to Neon).
• Trip reads/writes are server actions in src/app/my-meds/actions.ts; every query is scoped to the signed-in user's id, and input is validated against the real country codes and drug ids.
• Account deletion: src/app/api/webhooks/clerk/route.ts receives Clerk's user.deleted webhook and deletes that user's trips (trips have no foreign key to Clerk). Requests are signature-verified with CLERK_WEBHOOK_SIGNING_SECRET; register the endpoint https://<site>/api/webhooks/clerk (event user.deleted) in the Clerk Dashboard → Webhooks, and set the secret in Vercel.
• Clerk CLI: npx clerk doctor checks the setup; npx clerk config pull shows sign-in settings.

Search misses and reported problems

• Searches that match nothing are counted in public.search_misses (search text and a count only), so the next medicines added are the ones people look for.
• "Report a problem" under each entry saves the medicine, country and message to public.feedback.
• Both are anonymous: no user id, IP or session is stored. Read them with npm run feedback (last 30 days; -- --days 90 for more).

Registry verification and US name lookup

Offline verification. node scripts/verify/run.mjs <US|CA|SG|FR|GB|JP|DE|MX|IT|ES|TR|VN|ET|PT> checks one country's entries against its official registry and writes the evidence and every mismatch to research/verification/<CC>.json. That is a dry run; add --write to update drugs.json. Nothing here runs when the site is built or served.

Country	Registry	What it confirms
US	RxNorm + openFDA NDC	brand ↔ ingredient, ATC code, OTC / Rx / DEA schedule
CA	Health Canada DPD	brand ↔ ingredient, marketed status, schedule
SG	HSA register on data.gov.sg	brand ↔ ingredient, GSL / Pharmacy Only / Prescription Only
FR	BDPM	brand ↔ ingredient, marketed status, prescription conditions
GB	MHRA Products + NHS dm+d	MHRA: brand ↔ ingredient for licensed products. dm+d: legal category (GSL / P / POM) and controlled-drug schedule of packs on the market. dm+d needs a free NHS TRUD account: put the key in .env.local as TRUD_API_KEY. Without it the UK check is brand-only
JP	MHLW drug price list	Brand ↔ ingredient for prescription products covered by national insurance, which confirms an Rx status. It has no over-the-counter products, so OTC entries can't be confirmed, and it can't see an OTC twin of an Rx brand. Controlled-drug scheduling is checked by hand against the Narcotics Control Department list
DE	AMIce (BfArM)

Every check is free and needs no key, apart from the UK's legal-status step. --write is deliberately conservative: it never edits brand, status or note; it attaches verified when the registry confirms the entry; and it raises confidence to high only when the registry confirms everything the entry claims (brand, ingredient and legal status; for a "sold generic" entry with no brand, ingredient and legal status). An entry marked low that the registry confirms only in part goes to medium, so nothing verified keeps the "unconfirmed" mark. It never lowers confidence. A registry shows that a product is registered, not that a given pharmacy stocks it. After a run, refresh the report with node scripts/confidence-report.mjs. To add a country, write an adapter next to the others (open() and verify()) and register it in run.mjs.

Keeping it current. Registries change (the NHS dictionary weekly, the others every few weeks), so re-run the checks about once a month. A scheduled cloud routine ("Rx Abroad monthly registry check", the 1st of each month) does a dry run and reports what changed at https://claude.ai/code/routines; it can't see the TRUD key, so it skips UK legal status. To update the data yourself:

1. Open a terminal in the project folder (in VS Code: Terminal > New Terminal, or cd ~/dev/pill-trotter).
2. npm run verify is a dry run of all fifteen checked countries. It changes no data, only the report files in research/verification/, and takes about half an hour on the first run, most of it Germany, Portugal and Vietnam (results are cached for a day).
3. npm run verify:write does the same and also updates src/data/drugs.json and the confidence report.
4. Read the new mismatch lists in research/verification/ and check git diff src/data/drugs.json. The script never edits brand, status or note: those mismatches are yours to decide.
5. Commit and push. Pushing to main deploys to Vercel.

The UK legal-status step needs a free NHS TRUD account: subscribe to the "NHSBSA dm+d" item and put the key in .env.local as TRUD_API_KEY=... (the file is git-ignored). Without it a dry run still works but notes that legal status was skipped, and --write refuses for the UK so it can't overwrite the full check with a partial one. India has no registry check and is hidden from the site: every abdm.gov.in host, including the Drug Registry, blocks connections from outside India.

The cloud routine runs in the "Default" cloud environment, whose network access is set to Custom so it can reach the registries: rxnav.nlm.nih.gov, api.fda.gov, health-products.canada.ca, data.gov.sg, base-donnees-publique.medicaments.gouv.fr, mhraproducts4853.search.windows.net, www.mhlw.go.jp, portal.bfarm.de, auth.bfarm.de, registros.cofepris.gob.mx, api.aifa.gov.it, cima.aemps.es, titck.gov.tr, www.titck.gov.tr, dichvucong.dav.gov.vn, api.eris.efda.gov.et, www.efda.gov.et, extranet.infarmed.pt and www.ammps.gov.ma, plus the default package list. If a run reports HTTP 403 from a registry, check that list first.

Live lookup. GET /api/rxnorm/resolve?q=<name> (src/app/api/rxnorm/resolve/route.ts, logic in src/lib/rxnorm.ts) resolves a US medicine name to its ingredients and maps them to formulary drugs through each drug's rxcui. RxNorm allows browser calls and needs no key, so this route isn't hiding a secret: it turns three chained requests into one and lets the CDN cache each answer for a day, which is what NLM asks of API users (limit: 20 requests per second per IP). The search box only calls it when a query has no local match. The route is excluded from the Clerk matcher in src/proxy.ts, so lookups carry no session.

Project layout

Path	What
src/data/drugs.json	The formulary: 82 drugs × 16 countries (India's entries are kept but hidden from the site: hidden in src/data/countries.ts). A drug's optional kit field puts it in a travel-essentials group (src/data/kit.ts); drugs without one are listed under "Other". Its optional symptoms list says what it is sold for (src/data/symptoms.ts). Edit this to change the data.
src/data/countries.ts, status.ts, types.ts	Countries (with URL slugs), status labels, types
src/lib/search.ts	Search matching and country narrowing
src/components/	App components (ui/ holds the shadcn components)
src/app/	Routes: /, /drug/[id], /country/[slug], /symptom/[slug], /my-meds, /sign-in, /sign-up, sitemap, robots
src/lib/auth.ts, src/lib/db.ts, db/migrations/	Clerk user helper, Neon database client, schema
src/lib/rxnorm.ts, src/app/api/rxnorm/resolve/	US name lookup through RxNorm
scripts/verify/	Registry verifiers: run.mjs, shared lib.mjs, one adapter per country
scripts/confidence-report.mjs	Rebuilds research/confidence-by-country.md
research/verification/	Evidence and mismatches from the last verifier run, per country
scripts/extract-data.mjs	One-time import from the original single-file prototype
research/	Scripts and reports from the original data research (Health Canada DPD, French BDPM, …)

Data entry format

Each drug in drugs.json looks like this:

{
  "id": "paracetamol", "generic": "Paracetamol", "usAlt": "Acetaminophen (APAP) in the US",
  "cls": "Analgesic / antipyretic", "atc": "N02BE01", "rxcui": "161",
  "countries": {
    "FR": { "brand": "Doliprane", "status": "OTC", "confidence": "high", "note": null, "source": null }
  }
}

• status is one of OTC, RX, MIXED, PHARMACY, CONTROLLED, BANNED, UNCONFIRMED, ASK_GENERIC, UNAVAILABLE (not marketed in that country).
• confidence is high, medium (shows †), or low (shows ?).
• rxcui (RxNorm ingredient id) and each entry's optional verified block are written by scripts/verify/run.mjs. Don't edit them by hand; re-run the verifier instead.

The data was imported from the original prototype (then called Pill Trotter), pill-trotter-aug27.html, which has the verified India research. To check that the import still matches the prototype, run node scripts/extract-data.mjs --check ~/pill-trotter/pill-trotter-aug27.html.

Disclaimer

This is seed data for a prototype, compiled from general pharmacology knowledge. It is not a live regulatory feed. Brand names, availability, and prescription status change, and they vary by region and even by pharmacy. Confirm with a local pharmacist or physician before relying on this while traveling.

This product uses publicly available data from the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services; NLM is not responsible for the product and does not endorse or recommend this or any other product.

Roadmap

• Authorization and exemption forms. For controlled medicines that a country allows with advance permission, link to or help prepare the official paperwork. One example is Japan's Yunyu Kakunin-sho import certificate, which is needed for narcotics and for amounts above the personal-supply limits. The day-supply limits, the forms, and where to submit them need to be verified per country first.
• More destinations and medicines.