Drug Shortage API — Delta Monitor & FDA Shortage Tracker

A drug shortage API built on the official openFDA drug-shortages feed. It normalizes every FDA shortage into a clean, snake_case record, and — the moat vs a flat exporter — adds a delta monitor that emits only shortages that are NEW or whose status CHANGED since your last run, plus therapeutic-class and dosage-form rollups of current shortages.

Who it's for

• Hospital & health-system pharmacy teams tracking active drug shortages.
• Pharma supply-chain / procurement watching a therapeutic class or a competitor.
• 340B, GPO & drug-distribution analysts monitoring resolutions and reappearances.
• AI agents needing a chainable "FDA drug shortage" tool.

What it does

Pages the openFDA drug/shortages feed, normalizes dates to YYYY-MM-DD and array fields, and (optionally) runs in delta mode: keyed on a stable shortage id, it tags each record change_type = new | resolved | reappeared | updated | unchanged, and in monitor mode emits only the changed ones — a recurring shortage-change alert. Turn on includeRollup for summary rows counting current shortages per therapeutic category and per dosage form.

Example input

{
  "status": "Current",
  "therapeuticCategory": "",
  "sinceDate": "",
  "maxResults": 1000,
  "monitor": true,
  "includeRollup": true
}

Output

Detail rows (record_type: "shortage"): shortage_id, change_type (delta mode), generic_name, proprietary_name, company_name, status, availability, shortage_reason, resolved_note, related_info, therapeutic_category[], dosage_form, strength[], presentation, contact_info, update_type, initial_posting_date, update_date, change_date, product_ndc, route[], substance_name[], rxcui[], source_system.

Rollup rows (record_type: "rollup"): rollup_dimension (therapeutic_category | dosage_form), rollup_key, current_shortage_count.

Use as an MCP tool

Available to AI agents via mcp.apify.com as a "drug shortage monitor" tool — status/category in, normalized shortage records (with delta tags) out. The field-level output descriptions make it a clean, chainable tool.

FAQ

Where's the data from? The official FDA openFDA drug/shortages API. Is it keyless? Yes — openFDA is keyless, JSON, no anti-bot. Can I get only new/changed shortages? Yes — monitor: true on a schedule emits only new/resolved/reappeared/updated records. Can I count shortages by drug class? Yes — includeRollup: true. How fresh is it? openFDA refreshes the shortages dataset regularly; each run reads the current feed.

Source

FDA openFDA drug/shortages API (api.fda.gov/drug/shortages.json). Official, keyless, no anti-bot. Not for medical decisions — see the openFDA disclaimer.

Pricing (Pay Per Result)

Billed per record returned (detail + any rollup rows). Empty results cost nothing beyond the tiny actor start.