As incoming European markets look towards alternative delivery mechanisms like oils and vaporisers, more mature markets like the UK remain dominated by traditional dried cannabis flower, representing around 80% of all prescriptions.
Despite conistent double digit growth, rising 262% since 2022 and seeing 10 tonnes of flowers prescribed in 2024, the UK still lacks a centralised tracking system, mandatory product registry, or official source for patient feedback other than individual private clinics.
This not only means that analysts and industry stakeholders are left to trudge through messy Freedom of Information (FOI) data to gauge the size of the market and the shifting trends within it, but it also creates space for private companies in a position to amass this data to dominate.
Now, a new platform aiming to be the ‘Trustpilot of medical cannabis’ is hoping to help democratise this data and put it in the hands of patients.
Arron Dando, the creator of CannaBias, told Business of Cannabis: “I found that I seemingly go to multiple different sites to understand what it is that I’m purchasing. Sometimes I don’t know if it’s a sativa or an indica. It’s really quite tricky for me as a patient to actually understand what it is that I’m getting.”
What is CannaBias?
CannaBias, now in early access, positions itself as a ‘moderated, safe and independent review platform’ for UK medical cannabis patients, providing verified, batch-by-batch feedback on their prescribed products.
Its creator, Dando, says that his background developing ‘safety-critical’ software for the UK’s national infrastructure has shaped his approach to medical cannabis and his new platform.
“If you drive a car, you’ve probably driven past an AI system that I put on the highways,” he explained. “It applies quite neatly to medicinal cannabis because, again, it’s a heavily regulated safety-critical industry.”
Its inception, he explains, stems from his own frustrations as a patient: “I may go online, I see something working well that could be worth trying, but then I get it, and it doesn’t match the review. That could be because that person’s biased, or it could be because the batch quality is not consistent.”
With this issue front of mind, CannaBias is engineered to track reviews at the batch level, rather than simply by the product name, and well beyond the point of delivery to a patient’s door.
“At the moment, the traceability stops at the door. The prescription is handed over, and that seems to be the end of it.
“We can tell on average, across the whole data landscape, whether the consistency is varying a lot, or maybe there’s quality control issues that we’re able to pick up quicker.”
While feedback is shared with individual clinics, it’s often sporadic and rarely neutral.
“If you have five or 10 people saying there’s an issue with this product, that’s much more reputable than one person contacting their clinic and then that clinic contacting the pharmacy or the cultivator.”
Many of the issues CannaBias is targeting mirror those highlighted in an October 2025 themed review of 25 pharmacies regularly supplying CBPM prescriptions.
In the review, conducted by the General Pharmaceutical Council 68 discrete concerns were identified across the various pharmacies. While 17 pharmacies met all standards, eight failed to comply fully. The GPhC report noted that CBPM dispensing has ‘devolved into putting it in a box and shipping it,’ with little or no pharmacist-patient contact.
“What industry do we have where a product is manufactured, and they don’t actually get user feedback? There’s all this data out there at the moment, but it’s just not meaningful. It can’t be used in a way that actually benefits anybody.
“Medbud Wiki has lots of information there, and that’s valuable, most definitely, but I find it quite hard to use, quite complicated and not really patient-friendly. I don’t trust that the information is accurate all the time. If you have one person’s review, it’s biased, but if you have 100 people’s reviews, suddenly you’re removing the bias.”
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How it works
At the heart of the platform is a verification system designed to ensure every review is left by a verified patient who has tried that specific product.
The current process requires three photographs of the product packaging, ensuring one review per batch, per product, per patient. Each review is sent to an AI system for initial automated verification, then to manual human verification before patients can view products on the platform and submit reviews.
This three-stage system is, according to Dando, a prelude to a more sophisticated approach once clinic partnerships are established.
“If a clinic wants to be involved, then there is a stronger method of verification which is linked to them,” he explained. “We don’t hold any medical data with either process.”
With talks already underway with several clinics, Dando envisions a streamlined future where patients simply scan a QR code on their prescription packaging to verify their product.
“The route that I’ve always had in mind is actually having a QR code inside the prescription. I’ve seen QR codes on my prescriptions. I know this is possible.”
Accessibility is another core tenet of the platform, ensuring the entire patient population can use and navigate the site with ease.
“A lot of companies don’t actually make their sites accessible, although they should do so by legislation. Accessibility is pretty important for us.”
Rather than requiring patients to type extensive information, the platform is built around photographs. “If they don’t want to type, they just take photos. And it’s integrated within your phone. It’s mobile optimised.”
Go-to-market strategy
Rather than a traditional consumer launch, Dando is pursuing multiple routes to patients through the industry’s existing infrastructure, from patient association memberships to a network of ambassadors who can manually verify reviews.
“Working within such a small and regulated industry, there’s quite a lot of direct routes to patients. I’ve got every base covered, if necessary.”
The platform is currently in user testing with hand-selected patients, with full launch targeted for the end of January. The immediate focus remains on validating the data collection process.
“The data that we collect is the most important. It affects everything else that we do from that point onwards. So we need to make sure that that’s paramount.”
