For patients and families

The days after a difficult diagnosis are disorienting. Decisions that would ordinarily take weeks have to be made in hours, and the family is usually still absorbing what it has just heard. Somewhere in the middle of that, the consulting physician names a medicine. It is the one the specialist wants. It is approved in the United States. And, quietly, it is not yet registered in your country, or it is registered but unavailable through the hospital, or it is available but only on a waiting list that will not resolve in the time the illness is prepared to give you.

This page is for the family in that position. It explains what a named-patient program is, what Reserve Meds does inside it, and what we ask of you so that a therapy your physician has selected can be sourced lawfully from the United States and delivered to the destination where your care is already being managed.

What a named-patient program is, in one paragraph

A named-patient program is a legally defined pathway, recognised in most of the countries we serve, that allows a single identified patient to import a medicine that is approved abroad but not yet available locally. The prescription is written by your treating physician. The order is placed on behalf of that specific, named patient, under that physician's clinical responsibility. The medicine is sourced from a licensed US specialty pharmacy, documented under the US Drug Supply Chain Security Act, and imported through the destination country's own published pathway. It is not a workaround. It is the formal mechanism every major regulator provides for exactly this situation.

Who we coordinate for

Reserve Meds works with a narrow set of families, almost always introduced by a treating physician or a hospital case manager. Our clients are patients and families navigating oncology and haematologic malignancies, rare diseases with a single approved therapy, gene and cell therapies, paediatric neuromuscular indications, advanced autoimmune disease, and a handful of orphan metabolic and ophthalmologic conditions. We work cross-border into the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, India, Pakistan, Egypt, and a further set of jurisdictions where the named-patient pathway is open for the indication in question. We do not accept every request. We accept the ones where the pathway is clean, the physician is engaged, and we can do our work properly.

What the consultation feels like

The first conversation is with a human member of our coordination team, usually on a secure video line, usually within one business day of your enquiry. It is a quiet, unhurried conversation. We ask about the diagnosis, the current physician, the medicine that has been proposed, and the country where the patient is receiving care. We do not ask for clinical records in that first call. If the pathway is available and our service is appropriate for your situation, we explain what a formal engagement looks like, what we need from you and from your physician, and what it will cost. If the pathway is not available, or if another route is better, we say so plainly and, where we can, point you to where to go next.

A family that chooses to proceed is assigned a single coordinator who is your point of contact for the duration of the engagement. That person stays with you through the intake, the physician correspondence, the sourcing and quality checks, the shipment, and the handoff to the clinical team on the receiving end. There is no call centre. There is no ticket system. There is a name and a private line.

What we ask of you

For a named-patient engagement to proceed, we require three things from the patient side. The first is a valid prescription from the treating physician, written for the named patient and the specific therapy. The second is a short package of supporting clinical documentation, usually a diagnosis letter, the relevant test results that establish eligibility, and a brief treatment rationale from the prescriber. The third is the confirmed country of delivery and the intended receiving site, which is almost always a hospital pharmacy or the physician's clinic, not a private residence. We will walk you through exactly what is needed for your jurisdiction; the paperwork is usually smaller than families expect.

We also ask for patience with the rhythm of the process. A first shipment for a complex therapy typically takes two to four weeks from a signed engagement to delivery, depending on the destination country's import review, the cold-chain profile of the medicine, and the availability of the product through our licensed US wholesalers. Subsequent cycles are faster. We keep you informed at each step, but we will never promise a date we are not confident we can hold.

What we do not do

Reserve Meds is not a marketplace. We do not list prices, we do not compare brokers, and we do not act as a bazaar for any party willing to ship a box. We are not a gray channel. Every unit we coordinate moves through a DSCSA-compliant US specialty supply chain — sourced directly from manufacturers or via a US-licensed specialty wholesaler — with a serialised transaction history from manufacturer to patient. And we are not a substitute for local care. Your physician remains the person responsible for the clinical plan, the dosing, the monitoring, and the decisions that matter most. Our role is to make a particular logistical and regulatory problem disappear so that your physician can focus on the medicine and the patient.

A word on what this time feels like

Most of the families we work with are not accustomed to asking for help. They are senior professionals, business owners, clinicians themselves. The part of this that is hard is rarely the paperwork. The part that is hard is the quiet, sleepless sense that the system your family usually relies on cannot, this one time, do the thing that needs to be done. Our work begins there. We treat the engagement with the seriousness it deserves, we answer the phone the same day, and we remember that you are in the middle of the most important fortnight your family will face this year. Everything else follows from that.

Reviewed 2026-04-22 by Reserve Meds's AI clinical and regulatory review agents. Human pharmacist-in-charge: Altima Care. Next scheduled review: 2026-10-22.