The Finnish Medicines Agency Fimea is the national competent authority for regulating pharmaceuticals. As a central administrative agency operating under the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health it promotes the health and safety of the population by regulating medicinal, blood and tissue products, and by developing the pharmaceuticals sector.
Fimea’s aim is to improve the pharmaceutical service for the population and the safety, appropriateness and economy of pharmacotherapy. Fimea also enhances and provides the general population and other interested parties with impartial information on medicinal products. Fimea works in a close cooperation with relevant parties and stakeholders in the pharmaceutical field.
Fimea maintains and provides a public register for medicinal products containing medicinal products with marketing authorisation and products with a temporary special permit in Finland. The public register for medicinal products includes information for example on the identification, classification and packaging details and information about the medicinal substance, the required codes for prescription terms and conditions, ATC classification, pharmaceutical form and storage container. The register is primarily intended for the use of health care organisations responsible for the acquisition, distribution and sales of medicinal products. It is also a primary source (master) for the national for the national eHealth services that are provided by the Finnish Social Insurance Institution Kela.
Fimea transfers a set of the medicinal product registry to Kela, which then loads it to the national pharmaceutical database. Kela enriches the data with nationally relevant information, such as the price information for pharmacies or conditions for reimbursement amongst others. The pharmaceutical database acts as medicinal data’s master database for the Finnish eHealth and health care.
