Background

Led by a renowned group of practicing doctors and researchers, we know which pharmaceutical and nutraceutical products actually benefit and improve the health of our patients. How? Is the question that needs explanation. Regardless of all the lavish claims most pharmaceutical companies make about their products today, there are many that manufacture products that either do not work at all or do only a little to benefit the patient. Why? Is another question that needs scrutiny. Before we can even begin to make lavish claims about our products, there are several problems to identify and facts to establish as the ultimate truth when it comes to practicality in healthcare industry today.

Lack of quality ingredients

As most nutraceutical and herbal products contain ingredients that are used as food in houses such as fennel seeds, peppermint, ginger, etc and vitamins and minerals found in food. It is very difficult to find standardized ingredients because each ingredient may contain over a hundred active molecules, which are beneficial to health, that may vary every time the ingredient is grown or cultivated naturally. For example, the active molecules in Tribulus Terrestris, a herb traditionally used as an aphrodisiac, are called saponins. The concentration of saponins in a particular yield of Tribulus may vary due to several factors such as weather, quality of soil, temperature, and fertilizers. Thus it becomes very difficult to standardize natural ingredients and come up with a regulated yield of these ingredients. It requires a lot of controls and effective extraction and growing techniques to produce natural ingredients that contain a standardized amount of active molecules. When it comes to making a high quality supplement, it is necessary that you use standardized ingredients so that you can guarantee the effectiveness of your product every time someone uses it. Unfortunately, Pakistan lacks raw material industry that manufactures standardized natural ingredients and therefore the effectiveness of a supplement that uses non-standardized raw materials may vary greatly.

Affordability issues and hence compromise on quality by companies (It’s business after all)

The consumer market demands cheap and high quality medication at the same time. The product that is cheap and is of the highest quality is deemed the best by almost everyone. However, the notion of tradeoff between quality and price is the most difficult one for all Pharmaceutical and Nutraceutical Manufacturers. Normally when the price goes up the quality goes up as well and vice versa, but this is something that is very hard to be understand by a layman. It takes a lot of experience in order to judge the quality of a product and the price it is sold at.

  • Bad Manufacturing Practices

  • When a tablet, sachet, or syrup products are made. The products undergo a range of industrial operations such as drying, heating, coating, mixing, etc and all these operations have an effect on the quality of a product. The active ingredients may decrease in concentration on heating or drying. The water content may change the solubility of a powdered product. Therefore, the production has to have lots of controls and ongoing tests during production so that the manufacturing process can be standardized and the end product conforms to the claimed standard and amount of ingredients as mentioned on the product label.

  • Exaggerated medicinal claims by companies

  • Tough competition in the market, desperation to make high sales, and the desire to appear as the best are a few factors that guide the unethical and exaggerated claims some people or companies make on their products. These claims raise expectations of the user from a product they use.

At Trends and Himedic, we all come to work every day because we want to solve some of the biggest problems in the pharmaceutical industry today. Biased marketing, unethical selling practices, lack of evidence based nutraceutical products, unfair balance between quality and price, and lack of knowledge. Furthermore, as part of the healthcare industry we want to contribute to the global health crisis through social work and by providing medicine to patients who are non-affording. We want to be the pioneers of true research and development in the industry and find cures to communicable and non-communicable diseases not only through developing remarkable products but also through preaching the truth behind leading a happier and healthier life.

We are healthcare visionaries and we wish to create a happier and healthier world around us so that we would want to live in it together in love, harmony, and peace.