Look up a drug
One search box, four ways in, and a profile that tells you where every line came from. This is the screen most questions start on.
- 1
Type anything that identifies the medicine
Open Explore and start typing. Suggestions appear from two characters, and the box accepts four different kinds of thing:
What you type Example A brand name Algifor, Ozempic, Dafalgan An active substance (INN) ibuprofen, semaglutide, atorvastatin A WHO ATC code M01AE01, A10BJ06, C10AA05 A pack identifier a GTIN, Pharmacode, NDC, CIP-13, PZN or Swissmedic number Results are grouped by medicine, not by pack
The same product is registered separately in every country and often in several pack sizes. The suggestion list collapses those into one entry per medicine so that ten results mean ten different medicines, not one medicine in ten countries.
- 2
Pick one, and read down the profile
The profile loads section by section as each source answers — so the identity card appears immediately and the slower enrichment fills in behind it. Nothing is waiting on everything.
Identity
Product name, active substance, manufacturer and the full ATC chain from the top-level anatomical group down to the chemical substance. Flags appear here when they apply: withdrawn from market, carries the strongest warning class, reimbursed in Switzerland.
What it's for
The approved indications, taken from the label text a regulator published. This is the regulator's wording, not ours, and it is clipped for length — it is a summary of the label, not the label.
What to watch for
Boxed warnings and general warnings from the same label. If this section is absent, it means no label warning text is on file for this product — it does not mean the product carries no warnings.
Why an empty warnings panel is not shown at all
A rendered-but-empty warnings section reads as “we checked and it is clean”. That is a claim we are not making, so the section is omitted entirely rather than shown blank. Absence means unknown.
Where you can get it
How many of the markets we track carry a registration for this medicine, shown as a count out of the markets covered. This figure is computed from a sample of the catalogue rather than an exhaustive scan, so treat it as “registered in at least these countries” rather than an exact census.
What it costs
The Swiss public price from the BAG Specialities List, and the US acquisition cost from CMS NADAC, when we hold them. For a proper cross-country comparison use Prices instead — this panel shows what is on file for this specific product, not a normalised comparison.
We never estimate a price
If no published price is on file the panel says so. It does not interpolate from a neighbouring pack size, and it does not show a zero — a zero would be indistinguishable from “free”.
Structure
For small molecules: a 2D depiction, an interactive 3D conformer, and copyable SMILES and InChIKey strings with the ChEMBL identifier and a link out to PubChem.
- 3
Switch facets for a different angle on the same drug
The tabs across the top keep your selected drug and change what is shown: Targets for molecular pharmacology, Safety for adverse-event signals, Market for pricing. Your selection stays in the URL, so a profile is a shareable link.
When the search finds nothing
- Try the substance instead of the brand. Brand names are country-specific and frequently reused; the INN is not.
- Try the ATC code. If you know the class, the ATC route will find every product in it, including ones whose names we hold under a spelling you did not guess.
- Check the country. A medicine genuinely may not be registered where you are looking. That is an answer, not a failure.
- Check Sources. If the register that would carry it is showing as degraded, what you are seeing is a gap in our copy rather than a gap in the register.
The same thing over the API
Search is GET /v1/drugs?q=… and the full profile is GET /v1/drugs/{id}/profile — the console calls exactly those. Pack identifiers resolve through GET /v1/drugs/lookup. See the drugs family in the reference.