National coverage, reliable and independent

An understanding of policy and knowledge of the facts are needed if appropriate care is to be provided. They have to be underpinned by reliable and independent healthcare data.
Farminform provides reliable databases with information about the pharmaceutical market in the Netherlands, doing so on a not-for-profit basis, independently of interest groups and commercial parties. Farminform is an independent data trust paid for by the users of the information.

The information is used by pharmaceutical companies, pharmacies and chains, hospitals, the government and umbrella organisations. Farminform supports organisations that help both in hospital and out of hospital healthcare providers to use medicines efficiently for individual patients, for instance in cases of multidisciplinary cooperation where the individual parties find organising the data provision themselves to be too difficult and too expensive.

We find that:

• pharmaceutical care and policy can be improved by knowing the facts
• cooperation between stakeholders is needed if reliable healthcare data is to be provided
• exchange of information is needed if appropriate care is to be provided for patients
• independent data assurance is essential