In Finland, the availability of pharmaceuticals is excellent, even though global interruptions in the availability of pharmaceuticals have increased in recent years.

We are in daily contact with pharmaceutical and health product companies to ensure that all parties in the supply chain are aware of product level availability. We receive and share information about supply interruptions and other situations that may cause shortages.

By tracking sales and customer orders and deliveries, we can see which products have been in exceptional demand. This lets us know which products have run out and ended up in subsequent deliveries or which products are about to run out soon.

The emergency delivery of medicines secures the supply of vital medicines within 24 hours. If the medicine a customer needs is not found in a pharmacy, the pharmacy can order the product as an emergency delivery. Other emergency deliveries concern medical emergencies, such as poisonings. In such cases, we also deliver medicines to hospitals at night and during weekends.

We actively safeguard the quality of the medicines we deliver. We continuously identify potential risks and weaknesses in the supply chain and focus our efforts on preventing risks from occurring.

We ensure that the effectiveness and safety of medicines are not compromised during our control and handling of the product. Pharmacies, hospitals and hospital pharmacies report to us in case there are any product defects, and we pass the information on to manufacturers.

We keep a close eye on picking accuracy and drug waste. There have always been very few picking errors, and we have reduced the errors even further by improving our systems and introducing new tools.

Quality is a significant part of our daily work. The obligations brought about by changing demands drive us to continuously improve our operations.

We also carry out independent development work, because we believe that everything can always be done better. We develop our systems, operating models and processes continuously and in a multi-professional manner, meaning that our development projects involve many of our operations.

We also develop our operations based on the feedback we receive from our customers. We regularly measure customer satisfaction and listen to our customers' opinions with a sensitive ear.

We carry out regular internal audits. Audits are dictated by legislation, but we approach them from a developmental perspective and use them to gain insight on how we can serve our customers better. Internal audits are designed not only to ensure that our operations are legal but also to think about how we can improve our way of working.

We obtained the ISO 9001 quality certification in 2004. The core of our ISO 9001 certified management system consists of the fulfilment of customer promises and the principle of continuous improvement.

The majority of the medicines used in Finland are produced abroad. Disruptions in the pharmaceutical production chain result in temporary supply disruptions in Finland. In some situations, the import of a medicinal product to Finland can be limited. In such case, a pharmaceutical company may have to decide that, for instance, hospitalised patients will be given priority when the medicine is distributed.

In these situations, we offer distribution models for medicines that are in short supply. It means that we and the pharmaceutical company think about how we can get the medicine delivered to as many people as possible or to those that need it the most.

Due to our licence for the industrial manufacture of medicinal products, a batch of medicines for which the sales certifications have not yet been completed can exceptionally be sent to us from the manufacturer before the certification is completed. We distribute the drug once the certification process for the batch of medicine is finished. The procedure can speed up the delivery of the drug to patients in situations where the product is temporarily out of stock in Finland.