About Vial
The problem isn’t finding a longevity or health optimization provider. It’s figuring out who you’re actually dealing with.
TRT, GLP-1s, peptides, hormone therapy, longevity protocols. You can buy almost all of it online now.
That part got easy.
What didn’t get easy is figuring out who is behind the company, which doctors are prescribing, where the medication is coming from, whether the pharmacy checks out, or whether a regulator has already found something you’d probably want to know.
That’s why we built Vial.
We track health optimization providers across the U.S. and pull together information that normally lives in a dozen different places: FDA actions, federal exclusions, DEA registrations, provider records, pharmacy accreditation, reported breaches, physician disclosures, pricing, treatments and more.
Then we compare that with what the provider says about itself.
Sometimes it matches cleanly.
Sometimes it doesn’t.
What is Vial?
Vial is an independent research platform for health optimization providers.
There are currently 980 providers with published profiles and more than 6,500 providers in our broader tracking database.
For every published profile, we check 49 signals across 12 federal, state and accreditation sources. We also review the provider’s own site: who they say their doctors are, which pharmacy they use, what they charge, what they prescribe and what they leave out.
The goal isn’t to manufacture a verdict.
It’s to put enough information in front of you to make your own.
What are you actually checking?
The things we’d want to know ourselves.
- Has the FDA issued a warning letter, recall or injunction?
- Has the provider or anyone connected to it been excluded from a federal healthcare program?
- Are the physicians identifiable?
- Does the DEA information line up where controlled substances are involved?
- Which pharmacy is filling the prescription? Is that pharmacy accredited?
- Has there been a reported healthcare data breach?
- Does the company disclose pricing? Doctors? Pharmacy partners? Treatment details?
None of these questions is exotic. That’s almost the frustrating part. The information is often public; it’s just scattered across systems that were never designed for a person deciding whether to sign up for an online TRT clinic on a Tuesday night.
So we pull it together.
Where does the information come from?
Primarily government agencies, state records, accreditation organizations and the providers themselves.
We use sources including FDA enforcement data, OIG exclusion records, NPI information, DEA data and pharmacy accreditation records, then compare those findings with what a provider publishes publicly.
We don’t assume a claim is true because it appears on a polished website.
A website is marketing. Sometimes very good marketing.
We want to know what sits underneath it.
Across the providers we track, we’ve identified 350 federal enforcement actions.
What is the Vial Score?
The Vial Score runs from 0 to 100.
It reflects what we can verify about a provider, how much the provider discloses and whether we find compliance issues that matter.
0 to 100
- 85–100High Confidence
- 70–84Well Documented
- 50–69Limited Confidence
- 0–49Flagged
That distinction matters.
A 92 does not mean the doctor is better than the doctor at a company scoring 81. It doesn’t mean you’ll get better care. It doesn’t mean the medication will work.
Those would be absurd claims for us to make.
What we can tell you is whether we were able to identify the people involved, whether important information is disclosed, whether the outside data supports what the company says, and whether anything turned up that deserves a closer look.
That’s what the score is built to do.
Nothing more.
What doesn’t Vial measure?
We don’t rate doctors.
We don’t score bedside manner.
We don’t predict outcomes, and we don’t tell you whether TRT, semaglutide, hormone therapy or any other treatment is appropriate for you.
We also don’t collect patient reviews.
There are already plenty of places to find them. Some are useful. Some are noise. A glowing review from someone who lost 40 pounds tells you something about that person’s experience, but it tells you nothing about whether the prescribing physician is disclosed or whether the pharmacy has a history you should know about.
Those are different questions.
We stick to ours.
Can providers pay Vial?
No.
Providers don’t pay to be listed. They can’t pay for a higher score, better placement or a cleaner profile.
They can claim their profile, submit documentation, point out an error or give us information we didn’t have. We want them to. Better information makes Vial better.
But we review it before anything changes.
- No paid placements.
- No provider sponsorships.
- No affiliate revenue.
- No display advertising.
- No pay-to-play verification.
Money doesn’t move the score.
How current is the information?
We refresh it every week.
FDA, OIG and DEA enforcement checks run weekly, along with a broader refresh of provider data.
That matters because this market moves fast. Physicians change. Pharmacy relationships change. Companies change ownership. Regulators act. A warning letter gets issued. A provider that disclosed almost nothing six months ago suddenly starts naming its medical team and pharmacy partners.
We want the profile to change when the facts change.
Who writes the provider profiles?
Vial does.
Not the provider.
We review what the company says about itself, check it against outside sources and publish what we find.
That sounds like an obvious distinction, but online “reviews” in this category routinely amount to little more than a rewritten sales page, a pricing table and an affiliate link.
We’re not interested in doing that.
When something checks out, we say it checks out.
When we can’t verify it, we say that too.
How should I use Vial?
Start with the company you’re already considering.
Look at the score. Then ignore the score for a minute and read what’s underneath it.
Who are the doctors? Which pharmacy are they using? What turned up in the checks? What didn’t we find? Is there an enforcement action? Is something important missing?
Then compare a few providers side by side.
You may still choose the provider with the lower score. Price matters. Convenience matters. Treatment options matter. The doctor matters.
But at least you know what you’re choosing.
This market moved faster than the scrutiny around it.
Health optimization went mainstream before most people had even agreed on what to call it.
TRT clinics multiplied. GLP-1 telehealth companies exploded. Peptides moved from niche forums into Instagram feeds and podcast ads. Longevity became a business category.
Some of that growth has been genuinely good. Patients gained access. Prices became more visible. Treatments once confined to a handful of specialty practices became available to people who would never have found them otherwise.
But growth also created cover.
A professional website can be built in a week. Medical language can make an ordinary sales funnel sound clinical. “Pharmacy partner” can mean very different things depending on who the partner actually is. And a company can tell you it takes quality seriously without telling you the name of the pharmacy making the drug.
That is a strange amount of ambiguity for products people swallow, inject and put into their bodies.
The government already collects a surprising amount of useful information. The FDA knows one piece. OIG knows another. DEA has its data. State boards have theirs. Accreditation organizations maintain separate databases.
The information exists.
Consumers just weren’t meant to assemble it themselves.
Vial was.
By the numbers
What we check
Federal enforcement
FDA warning letters, recalls, injunctions and other enforcement actions.
Federal exclusions
OIG exclusions and federal program disqualifications.
Provider information
Physician identities, registrations and other provider information we can independently check.
Controlled substances
DEA status and related information when controlled substances are involved.
Pharmacy accreditation
Whether disclosed pharmacy partners carry relevant independent accreditation.
Breaches and incidents
Reported healthcare privacy and security events.
Provider disclosure
Doctors. Pharmacies. Pricing. Treatments.
Basic information, frankly. But information that is still missing far too often.
Who built Vial
Colin Digiaro
Founder
Vial started with a personal rabbit hole.
Colin Digiaro got interested in optimization medicine the way a lot of people do: friends were talking about it, podcasts were full of it, new treatments kept showing up, and the whole category was moving quickly.
The treatments were interesting.
The companies were harder to figure out.
A clinic could look established and disclose almost nothing about its medical team. Another could advertise compounded medication without clearly identifying the pharmacy. A third might have perfectly legitimate answers to both questions, but you had to dig through three databases and half its website to figure that out.
Then came the bigger question: why was everyone doing this work separately?
That became Vial.
Not because every provider is suspect. They aren’t.
And not because government databases have all the answers. They absolutely don’t.
But if a company wants someone to trust it with a prescription, a recurring charge and a drug going into their body, asking who is behind it and whether the basic facts check out is not unreasonable.
Vial surfaces compliance signals from public federal and state records. The Vial Score reflects the available public record at the time of last refresh and is not a guarantee of provider quality, safety, or clinical outcomes. Vial is not a medical provider, does not offer clinical advice, and is not affiliated with any provider it tracks. Always consult a licensed clinician before beginning any protocol.