OBJECTIVES: In Finland, implementation and adoption of the national Kanta services has been carried out step-by-step since May 2010. Electronic prescription (eP) is mandatory and prescription validity period was extended to two years since January 2017. The administrative nationwide 'big bang' changes brought up the first opportunity to find out prescription volume in Finland.

METHODS: Written and telephone prescriptions were recorded into the national Prescription Centre (PC) in community pharmacies, and ePs via electronic health record systems or Kelain web prescription service. Data from PC were extracted from 1 January 2017 till 30 April 2019.

RESULTS: Cumulatively 5.57 million (M) persons had 162.26M ePs in PC by 31 December 2018. Number of persons who received ePs was 4.34M in 2017 and 4.38M in 2018. Of the 31.91M ePs recorded into PC in 2017, only 1.26% were recorded at community pharmacies, whereas 28.29M and 1.23% in 2018. Number of ePs in 2018 was 11% lower than in 2017. Basing on numbers of recorded ePs from January to May 2019, it is estimated that there would be 28.86M ePs in 2019. Cumulatively 322.30M dispensations from ePs at community pharmacies were recorded by 31 December 2018. Numbers for dispensations were 61.39M and 64.42M in 2017 and 2018. Number of dispensations in 2018 was 5% higher than in 2017. Altogether, 2.30M eP renewal requests were sent to healthcare via My Kanta Pages patient portal in 2017 and 2.07M in 2018 (service was launched in mid-November 2015). Some 2,111 dispensations in Estonia were based on the Finnish ePs (January–May 2019).

CONCLUSIONS: All (100%) prescriptions are recorded into a national PC database since January 2017. Number of ePs recorded into PC decreased whereas number of dispensations increased from 2017 to 2018 in Finland. We estimate that the decreasing recorded eP trend would continue in 2019.