Saudi Arabia launches a tool that detects dangerous interactions between medicines, foods and herbs

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King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) has launched a new digital tool called “Salem”, which allows checking potential interactions between medicines, foods and herbs, and alerting to critical interactions, in a step aimed at enhancing drug safety and helping patients and health practitioners identify the risks associated with taking some medicines with food or herbal products.

The tool's database includes more than 9,200 medications registered with the Food and Drug Authority, in addition to 35 food categories, and more than 870 potential drug, food, and herbal interactions, providing a digital reference for verifying interactions and classifying them according to their degree of effect.

Interactions between drugs, foods, and herbs are of particular importance in health practices, as some food ingredients or herbal preparations may affect the absorption or effectiveness of the drug, or increase the likelihood of some of its side effects.

These interactions are not limited to taking two medications at the same time, but may also occur when combining some treatments with foods, drinks, or herbal products, which makes checking for potential interactions an important part of the safe use of medications.

In this context, the “Salem” tool allows identifying interventions recorded in its database, classifying them according to the level of impact, and issuing immediate alerts regarding cases classified as critical.

CAXT explained that the tool is based on a database that includes thousands of medicines registered in the Kingdom, in addition to food items and potential interactions with herbal products.

This content supports the development of unified national references to verify drug, food and herbal interactions, which helps provide organized information that can be used in digital health systems and services.

"Salem" is characterized by being open source, which allows developers and technical entities to view, develop, and reuse its software code according to the terms of its license.

The tool also supports the possibility of integration with digital health systems, which opens the way to benefit from verification and alerting functions within health applications and platforms.

Its launch comes as part of efforts to employ digital technologies to support quality healthcare and develop tools that help raise awareness of the safe use of medicines.

Despite the importance of these tools in identifying potential interactions, their results remain supportive information that does not substitute for consulting a doctor or pharmacist, especially when using multiple medications or the presence of chronic diseases, and they should not be relied upon alone to stop treatment or change its dosage.