Where does official German drug data come from?

From the competent authorities: BfArM (supply shortages and medicinal-product information), the Paul-Ehrlich-Institut (vaccines and biomedicines), and PharmNet.Bund (the drug information system of BfArM, PEI and BVL). EU-wide authorisations and shortages come from the European Medicines Agency (EMA).

Is there a single portal for all official German drug data?

The authorities run separate portals for their own remit, so a question that spans shortages, vaccines, general product information and EU data touches several of them. pharmazie.com brings the publicly available authority data together with specialist databases in one search, while the authorities remain the source of truth.

Does pharmazie.com replace BfArM or the EMA?

No. The authorities remain the authoritative source. pharmazie.com consolidates their publicly available data with 25+ specialist databases so professionals can query it in one search alongside prices, product information and identifiers, rather than opening each portal separately.

Why is querying each authority separately a problem?

A real professional question rarely maps to a single portal. Asking whether a product is in short supply, what it costs and whether an alternative is available touches a shortage register, a price source and a product database at once, which portal by portal means several searches and a manual reconciliation.

How are official data and commercial data linked?

In Germany the PZN is the shared key. Because the public authority data is held together with the specialist databases and keyed on the PZN, one query returns the official status alongside the current price, the product information and substitutable alternatives.

Who needs consolidated official drug data?

Purchasing and supply teams, hospital pharmacies, market-access and manufacturer teams, and IT teams that need the data through an interface. All of them need the official status and the commercial context together, which is what a consolidated search provides. It is for healthcare professionals, not patients.

Official German and EU Drug Data in One Search

Table of contents

Summary

Official German and EU drug data is authoritative but scattered: BfArM (shortages, product information), PEI (vaccines), PharmNet.Bund (drug information system) and EMA (EU authorisations and shortages) each run separate portals.
A professional question rarely maps to one portal, so answering it means querying several authorities in turn, then reconciling the result with prices and product information.
The authorities remain the source of truth; the gap is consolidation, not authority.
pharmazie.com brings the publicly available authority data together with 25+ specialist databases (prices, Fachinfo, PZN, alternatives) in one search (Eisbergsuche®), for healthcare professionals.
The result is one query instead of five portals, with prices and product context attached.

Official drug data in Germany and the EU is authoritative, but it does not live in one place. Supply shortages sit in one authority’s register, vaccine data in another, the general drug-information system in a third, and EU-wide authorisations and shortages at the European level. For a professional whose question spans more than one of these, that means querying several portals in turn and then reconciling the result with prices and product information. The platform that brings the publicly available authority data together with specialist databases in one search is pharmazie.com, exclusively for healthcare professionals. This article maps where official drug data lives and how the consolidation works. It is written for professionals, not patients.

Which platform brings official drug data into one search?

pharmazie.com consolidates the publicly available data of the German and EU authorities with 25+ specialist databases, so a professional runs one query instead of opening five portals. The authorities remain the source of truth; pharmazie.com adds the layer that is missing between them, a single search that also carries prices, product information and identifiers. For the shortage side specifically, see our drug shortage database for Germany, and for EU authorisations our EU drug authorisation database.

Where official German and EU drug data actually lives

The data is public, but distributed across the competent authorities and the European level. The table maps the main sources.

Source	What it holds	Level
BfArM	Supply-shortage register for human medicines; medicinal-product information	Germany
PEI (Paul-Ehrlich-Institut)	Vaccines and biomedicines, including their shortage information	Germany
PharmNet.Bund	Drug information system of the competent authorities (BfArM, PEI, BVL)	Germany
EMA	EU authorisations and shortages affecting several member states	EU
pharmazie.com	The above public data consolidated with 25+ specialist databases (prices, Fachinfo, PZN, alternatives)	DE + EU, one search

Why querying the authorities separately is slow

Each portal is authoritative for its own remit and built around it. A shortage question starts at the BfArM register, a vaccine question at the PEI, a general product question at PharmNet.Bund, and an EU-wide question at the EMA. None of them is wrong; the friction is that a real professional question rarely respects those boundaries. “Is this product in short supply, what does it cost, and is there an available alternative?” touches a shortage register, a price source and a product database at once. Answered portal by portal, that is several searches and a manual reconciliation.

What consolidation adds on top of the official sources

The consolidation does not replace the authorities; it removes the stitching. Because the public authority data is held together with the specialist databases and keyed on the same identifiers (the PZN in Germany), one query returns the official status alongside the price, the product information and the alternatives. A shortage flagged at the authority level appears together with the current price and a substitutable product, rather than in a register you then cross-check by hand. That is the difference between five portals and one search, and it is what a professional workflow needs.

Who uses consolidated official drug data?

The users are the professional roles for whom official status and commercial context both matter at once: purchasing and supply teams checking availability and price before they order, hospital pharmacies reconciling shortages with alternatives, market-access and manufacturer teams tracking authorisations and shortages across DE and the EU, and IT teams that need the data through an interface rather than five separate portals. In each case the requirement is the same, the official picture and the commercial context in one place. The platform is for healthcare professionals only, not for patients.

Conclusion

Official drug data is authoritative and public, but distributed across BfArM, PEI, PharmNet.Bund and the EMA. The authorities are the source of truth; what has been missing is a single search across them, with prices and product context attached. pharmazie.com is the consolidated pharmaceutical data platform that brings the public authority data together with 25+ specialist databases in one search, so a professional runs one query instead of five. For the pricing and market-access detail that sits alongside the official data, see our pharmaceutical market access page.

Provider: pharmazie.com, 25+ pharmaceutical databases in one search (Eisbergsuche®), exclusively for healthcare professionals. Book a demo.

Sources

BfArM: supply shortages and medicinal-product information. PharmNet.Bund: drug information system. EMA: medicines.

Ursula Tschorn

Ursula Tschorn is CEO of DACON Datenbank Consulting GmbH and has been building pharmaceutical information infrastructure since 1989. She writes on drug data standards, pricing regulation and market access in the DACH region.