Putting the PhPID in IDMP

What is your go-to medication for a nasty headache or that pain in your back, elbow, or knee that appears every so often? There are many brand names that paracetamol is known by: Panadol, Tylenol, Doliprane, or even Zolben, all have paracetamol as their main active substance. So, how can you be sure that the Panadol tablets you have at home are the same strength as the Alvedon tablets given to you by the pharmacist on your holiday in Sweden? Or that they even contain paracetamol at all, and not another common substance used in painkillers, like aspirin, which you happen to be allergic to?

Enter the PhPID.

The pharmaceutical product identifier (PhPID) is a code generated for identifying pharmaceutical products based on substance, dose form, and strength. The PhPID forms part of a larger set of ISO standards. Known as the Identification of Medicinal Products (IDMP), these standards aim to express information on medicines consistently. The PhPID serves as the common denominator between similar medicines in different countries. With the PhPID in hand, a pharmacist could easily look up and compare the Alvedon they are giving you to the Panadol you are used to taking to ensure that they are the same thing and avoid any unpleasant side effects.

But generating the PhPID is no easy feat. Different countries have different ways of describing their medicinal products, and while there are ongoing efforts to implement IDMP standards in different regions, there has previously not been a concerted effort to implement IDMP at the global level, where it would have a great impact on medicines safety. To this end, a meeting between international regulators in 2021 led to the formation of the Global IDMP Working Group (GIDWG). With the US Food and Drug Administration, European Medicines Agency, and Uppsala Monitoring Centre (UMC) as founding members, the GIDWG aims to support implementation and maintenance of the global IDMP identifiers. Drawing on its long-standing experience in developing and maintaining UMC’s Drug Dictionary, WHODrug Global, the world's most comprehensive pharmaceutical product dictionary, UMC has been designated as the maintenance organisation responsible for PhPIDs and the global substance identifiers (GSIDs).

PhPIDs are created by UMC through a structured, standards-based process involving the regulatory authorities. National regulatory authorities provide information on their medicinal products, which UMC then harmonises into global PhPIDs and makes them available for reuse, so that the same pharmaceutical product can be recognised consistently across countries. To support interoperability and future integration with regulatory systems, this process is designed to align with modern data exchange standards, enabling PhPIDs to be generated, shared, and reused efficiently as part of broader regulatory workflows. Since its launch, the application has already enabled the creation of more than 70,000 Global PhPIDs—and that number continues to grow.

UMC will provide the global PhPIDs linked to the local medicinal products and integrate the PhPIDs for pharmacovigilance purposes into WHODrug Global. The use of PhPIDs in combination with other data could eventually be used not only for pharmacovigilance, but also in other phases of the medicinal product life cycle, from manufacture to dispensing. The PhPID can then be linked with national identifiers, such as the medicinal product identifier (MPID) and medicinal product package identifier (PCID), supporting additional use cases for regulators.

So, what does this mean for regulators, industry, and pharmacovigilance in general? With a PhPID serving as the common denominator for related medicines, there is less risk of adverse drug reactions from taking the wrong medication, and it may be easier to address medicine shortages, as national regulatory authorities will be better able to identify appropriate substitutes in other countries. The PhPID will also facilitate data exchange, as it will be much easier to recognise and compare different medicines.

Realising the full potential of IDMP will require regions to bridge the gap between the global framework and their own regulatory landscape. This means developing a deeper familiarity with the ISO IDMP standards, translating the global context into regional guidance and terminologies, and identifying regional experts who can support the effective adoption of IDMP identifiers as they become available.

The road to global IDMP implementation is long and complex, and will look different for each country. Still, UMC hopes that its contribution to implementing the IDMP standards will help countries navigate this road more confidently so that we can all benefit from the many advantages of using global identifiers to exchange information on medicines.