From Wednesday 11 December 2024, PharmaStatus, the online application that collects information about the availability of medicines in Belgium, has adopted a fresh look. The Federal Agency for Medicines and Health Products (FAMHP) has integrated new functionalities and updated the interface of the application.
PharmaStatus provides information about all medicines (for human and veterinary use) authorised in Belgium. The application shows when medicines are temporarily unavailable, when their commercialisation has definitively been stopped, or when they are available again.
Change in the layout of PharmaStatus
The renewed version of PharmaStatus has adopted a new layout, which is clearer and more in harmony with the PharmaInfo application and the medicines database.
Besides the new layout, the home page of the PharmaStatus application has been improved.
The statistics presented have been revised to provide clearer information. Unlike the previous version, data are now presented as numbers of unavailable packages instead of numbers of unavailable medicinal products.
The presentation has been updated to show the number of unavailable medicines compared to the number of medicines commercialised. A diagram illustrates the number of packages that are temporarily unavailable, classified according to how critical the unavailability is.
An overview of the stops and starts of commercialisation and of how many packages have become available again over the past 30 days is also shown on the home page.
Abolition of the status 'interruption of commercialisation'
Previously, when a medicine was declared unavailable for one year or more, it was notified as an 'interruption of commercialisation'. This status has been abolished to align with the European procedures. It will thus no longer appear in the application.
When a medicine is declared unavailable for at least two weeks, regardlessof duration, it is notified as 'temporarily unavailable'.
Medicines previously listed as an 'interruption of commercialisation' have been automatically changed to the status 'temporarily unavailable'.
New status 'unavailability established by the FAMHP'
A new status 'unavailability established by the FAMHP' has been added to ensure that the information is as up to date as possible.
This status applies when a medicine, however it has been declared available by the company, is in reality unavailable. This decision is made after the company concerned was warned by the FAMHP and did not answer within a reasonable period. The company can update this status at all times and the mention will be removed automatically. The FAMHP urges pharmacists and wholesaler-distributors to keep on sending messages to authorisation holders (pharmaceutical companies) or parallel distributors through PharmaStatus. We wish to insist on the fact that, of course, this measure will only be applied if the company does not answer.
You will find more information about those functionalities in the manual in the FAQ on PharmaStatus.