Party (prescription and expedition support)

The Norwegian Medicines Agency manages structured information about medicines through FEST (prescription and expedition support). Fest is a data source and the primary source of information about drugs and reimbursement information in the doctor’s medical records system, the pharmacies’ expedition system, e-prescription, core journal, etc. There is both drug information from own management area and from relevant partners. Party is a data base where the information is presented in XML format and assumes that you have a program that can be set up to download the FEST message (M30). Via FEST, the Norwegian Medicines Agency can send notifications with important information directly to the doctor’s journal system, such as information about serious side effects, withdrawals and drug interactions, etc. The Norwegian Medicines Agency works to make FEST go from being delivered in XML format to presented as open, linked data. Increasingly new groups are using FEST, such as hospitals and nursing homes. This requires a reliable, flexible and accessible FEST service. Party, as it is built up today, is not suitable for meeting the coming needs. There is a need to develop FEST into an open data source. This means that the information is made as accessible as possible and that data is presented in a way that allows direct query.