National Prescribed Drug Register

Purpose of the Register

The purpose of the Register is to improve patient safety in the field of pharmaceuticals. The Register is used by researchers, journalists and investigators in county councils and public agencies, as well as by representatives of the pharmaceutical industry. Improved knowledge about the effects and safety of different medicines can ultimately benefit each individual patient.

• The data can be used to answer such questions as:
• Does antibiotic prescription continue to decline?
• How many older people receive ten or more medicines at the same time?
• Are there regional differences in the prescription of ADHD medicines?

The Register is updated on a monthly basis.

Contents of the Register

The Register contains all prescribed drugs that are dispensed at pharmacies as well as information on dispensed medical devices and medical consumables within the pharmaceutical benefits scheme, such as ostomy products and foods for nutritional use by children under 16 years. The number of entries in the Register is just over 100 million per year.

The Register contains information on:

• the patient (sex, age and place of registration)
• the product (e.g., ATC code, drug name, strength, pack size)
• the prescription (e.g., quantity prescribed, date of prescription and date when the product was picked up at the pharmacy)
• costs (county council cost and additional patient cost)
• the prescriber (features/characteristics of the work place where the prescription took place, for example activities, and the prescriber’s occupation/title and specialist training).

For the full list of all the register's variables, see the list of variables

For information about the quality of the Register, such as missing data, variable content and history, see Production and quality of the Prescribed Drug Register.

Legal regulation of the Register

The Prescribed Drug Register is regulated by the Health data Register Act (1998:543) and the associated regulation (2005:363). The National Prescribed Drug Register contains data from the National Medication List, which is controlled and managed by the Swedish eHealth Agency. The National Medication List Act (2018:1212) states that the Swedish eHealth Agency has an obligation to provide information to the National Prescribed Drug Register.

Reporting to the National Prescribed Drug Register

All data in the National Prescribed Drug Register come from the Swedish eHealth Agency. All retailers selling pharmaceuticals are obliged to report sales data to the Swedish eHealth Agency. In addition, pharmacies are required to provide additional information to the eHealth Agency when a prescribed drug is dispensed. The eHealth Agency, in turn, submits data on dispensed prescriptions to the National Board of Health and Welfare.

Statistics based on the Register

Extract statistics from the database.

For ordering statistics from the Patient Register, see Ordering data and statistics (only available in Swedish).