Norway is not an EU member State but is often a key player when innovation is at stake.

NoMA is indeed one of the most proactive UNICOM partners and is expected to be one of the few major public contributors to the making-of the feeding of the database (products pilot list) to be released on the UNICOM FHIR® IDMP server.  This server is the key instrument which will support all the different UNICOM demonstrators to be implemented during the last period of the project.

More importantly, what makes of NoMA a key innovator in Europe is its commitment to disseminate data about medicinal products for clinical use in the global and Norwegian eco-system guaranteeing thus “interoperability at the source” for all use cases. NoMA is thus an active supporter of the enrichment of its medicinal product database with PhpID (pharmaceutical product identifier) supported by an adequate management and governance process.

Only a very limited number of European States are currently taking this role over.

If you wish to learn more about learn more about how NoMA is doing this, and the NOMA roadmap to IDMP please have a look here.

It is thus not a big surprise if the European Commission has awarded NoMA, the Norwegian Medicines Agency, the prestigious title of “key innovator; The same title has also been awarded to AGES in Austria and to AEMPS in Spain.

The four reasons mentioned by the Commission for granting NoMA this title are all directly connected to UNICOM goals:

• Connecting to and making use of EMA’s SPOR databases
• Download/upload of pharmaceutical and clinical information from central data sources
• Implementation of HL7 FHIR standards for data interoperability
• Implementation of ISO IDMP in NoMA’s medicinal products databases

The reasons mentioned for Austria and Spain are roughly similar. But the nine other European Medicines Agencies active in the UNICOM consortium (AFMPS in Belgium, HALMED in Croatia, EESAM in Estonia, FINEA in Finland, BfArM in Germany, HPRA in Ireland, CBG in the Netherlands, INFARMED in Portugal  and SEMPA in Sweden) should  all be considered as innovators as they all initiated an important transformation process.