The NorPD contains a complete overview about dispensing of prescribed medicines to patients, doctors and institutions from pharmacies. Established in 2004, the NorPD includes over 34 million prescriptions that are dispensed per year in Norwegian pharmacies. Drugs purchased without prescription (OTC) are not included.
The aim of the NorPD is to collect and process data on prescribed drug use in humans and animals.
Find statistics and data |
You can make your own tables based on NorPD’s statistics bank at www.norpd.no The latest data regarding drug consumption based on data from wholesalers can be found at Wholesaler drug statistics |
Usage and trends can be monitored, giving health authorities a statistical base for quality control of drug use and planning.
NorPD has a separate webpage with a selection of statistics about drugs dispensed on prescription in Norway, www.norpd.no, which is now available in English.
The following data can be extracted:
- Number of users; split by sex, age, county or health region
- Number of users per 1000 inhabitants (prevalence per 1000)
- Population; split by sex, age, county or health region
- Turnover in Norwegian kroner
- Turnover in dosage (DDD – defined daily doses)
Personal information is anonymised by use of pseudonyms to replace name and unique personal number. Each individual is registered with a serial number so it is possible to link medicine use to an individual over time without knowing their identity.
Extraction of data for researchers
Researchers can request table data and individual data (by pseudonym) from NorPD for health monitoring or research, in accordance with NorPD’s Aims – see related documents for Aims and Guidelines.