SE: The flow of product and article information

eHälsomyndigheten has the national responsibility to compile and supply a national product and article register to the Swedish market. The purpose of the register, called VARA, is to supply the Swedish market with up to date and quality assured product and article information for the approved pharmaceuticals on the market in Sweden and consumer products within the reimbursement system.

VARA is distributed to all pharmacies, veterinarian health care systems, system suppliers, statistics stakeholders and SIL, Svensk Informationsdatabas för Läkemedel. SIL in turn distributes the VARA information to health care actors. All health care systems should be integrated with SIL.

Figure 1 shows the VARA system at eHälsomyndigheten and its sources. VARA daily collects and compiles updates from NPL.

Figure 1 The VARA system and its sources

The quality of data in VARA is vital, and the information in VARA is therefore updated in accordance with a well-defined input process. All changes are validated with automatic validity checks, and are thereafter reviewed and approved by pharmacists before they are published once a day.

It is the responsibility of the information owners, such as TLV, MPA (LV) and pharma companies to deliver quality assured information to VARA and quickly correct any deviations.

Pharmacies are required to update their systems with information from VARA daily in order to be able to file prescriptions from Receptdepån at eHälsomyndigheten. Currently SIL and health care systems are updated with VARA information approximately once a week.

Figure 2 shows how dispensing systems at pharmacies use a local copy of VARA and how central systems such as Receptdepå (RR)/receptdepå djur (RRD), Läkemedelsförteckningen (LF), and Försäljningstransaktionsregistret (FOTA) at eHälsomyndigheten are directly linked to VARA. The figure schematically also shows how health care actors have access to VARA via SIL alternatively for veterinarian health care systems directly from eHälsomyndigheten, and how electronic prescriptions get into RR/RRD.

Figure 2 VARA, pharmacies and health care actors

Table 1 Translations for figure 2

Swedish	English
SIL SIL-databas Andra   källor	SIL SIL database Other sources
E-recept djur	E-presription animals
Apoteksaktör A-B Expedierande system Andra varor VARA-kopia	Pharmacy Actor A-B Dispensing system Other articles VARA (copy)
Veterinär vårdaktör C Vårdsystem	Veterinarian health care actor C Health care system
Vårdaktör D-E Vårdsystem	Health care actor D-E Health care system