About
WHO Collaborating Centre for Drug Statistics Methodology
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The Centre was established in 1982. The Centre is located in Oslo at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health and funded by the Norwegian government.
Mission
The Centre's main activities are development and maintenance of the ATC/DDD system, including:
- To classify drugs according to the ATC system.
- To establish DDDs for drugs which have been assigned an ATC code.
- To review and revise as necessary the ATC classification system and DDDs.
- To stimulate and influence the practical use of the ATC system by co-operating with researchers in the drug utilization field.
- To organize training courses in the ATC/DDD methodology and to lecture such courses and seminars organized by others.
- To provide technical support to countries in setting up their national medicines classification systems and build capacity in the use of medicines consumption information
History
The purpose of the ATC/DDD system is to serve as a tool for drug utilization monitoring and research in order to improve quality of drug use. One component of this is the presentation and comparison of drug consumption statistics at international and other levels.
A major aim of the Centre and Working Group is to maintain stable ATC codes and DDDs over time to allow trends in drug consumption to be studied without the complication of frequent changes to the system. There is a strong reluctance to make changes to classifications or DDDs where such changes are requested for reasons not directly related to drug consumption studies. For this reason the ATC/DDD system by itself is not suitable for guiding decisions about reimbursement, pricing and therapeutic substitution.
It is essential that a tool for drug utilization monitoring and research is able to cover most medicines available on the market. An important aim of drug utilization is to monitor rational as well as irrational drug use as an important step in improving the quality of drug use. The classification of a substance in the ATC/DDD system is therefore not a recommendation for use and it does not imply any judgements about efficacy or relative efficacy of drugs and groups of drugs.