The problem
Regulated nationally. Analysed internationally.
Pharmaceutical teams routinely need to compare medicine information across markets - identifiers, pack presentations, prices, manufacturers, distributors, reimbursement status and availability. That information exists, but it is published country by country.
One product, three markets
The same pack, published three ways.
Amoxicillin, 500 mg, sixteen capsules. Three national sources publish it in three formats and three naming conventions, two of them with prices - and none with a shared identifier to join them.
- RSALIMS - Registar lekovaHTML
Amoksicilin · kaps. tvrda, 500 mg · blister, 16 kom
No price published
- HRHALMED - Baza lijekovaXLSX
AMOKSICILIN CAPS 500MG×16 · cijena 3,10 EUR
Comma-decimal EUR price
- GREOF - Δελτίο ΤιμώνPDF
ΑΜΟΞΙΚΙΛΛΙΝΗ 500MG/CAP BTx16 · 2,86 €
Greek script, bulletin only
Where it breaks down
Six compounding challenges.
Sources
Data is fragmented across many sources - registries, bulletins, spreadsheets and PDFs, country by country.
Definitions
Fields are not always defined the same way, so “price” or “pack” in one market is not “price” or “pack” in another.
Identifiers
Product names, pack sizes and identifiers differ between countries, with no shared key to join them on.
Structures
Pricing and reimbursement information follows different structures and rules in each market.
Cadence
Updates happen on different schedules - monthly bulletins here, ad-hoc registry changes there.
Audit
Manual reconciliation is time-consuming, and the result is difficult to audit or reproduce.
How teams cope today
Spreadsheets, consultants and local teams.
Companies often rely on internal spreadsheets, manual research, local affiliates, consultants or fragmented databases. These approaches can work in isolated cases - but they are difficult to scale across multiple countries while maintaining consistency, traceability and update discipline.