Making a Visit to the Drug Store Less Confusing

Are you totally baffled by the number of products your drug store offers? Get help sorting through the clutter with a new mobile and web application called LabDoor.

LabDoor helps consumers make sense of advertising claims, safety labels and ingredient labels on supplements. Eventually, it will eventually help with over-the-counter medicines, too. The first version of the app includes 7,000 vitamins, protein powders, energy drinks and other nutritional supplements.

The founders curated original and existing lab research and studies and turned that information into something consumers could easily use. Their app uses proprietary data algorithms to crunch that data and assign products a letter grade from A to F, plus a score for ingredient quality, clinical efficacy, regulatory environment and label accuracy.

Similar to GoodGuide, Fooducate and the Consumer Reports mobile app, LabDoor lets shoppers use their smartphone to scan a product’s barcode and bring up its profile, which contains the ratings and product reviews and a way to search for similar products. Users can also scan products they’d like to see reviewed into LabDoor’s database.