Logotype. Go to startpage

Folder about generic substitution

The Dental and Pharmaceutical Benefits Agency (TLV) and the Medical Products Agency (MPA) have produced information material about generic substitution. This explains why the pharmacy often offers its customers a different, but equivalent, medicine than the one that is shown on the prescription.

Eight language versions

Part of this material is intended for patients - it is concise and provides answers to frequently asked questions. It is translated into eight different languages: Arabic, English, French, Persian, Bosnian/Croat/Serbian, Somali, Sorani/South Kurdish and Spanish. See link on right.

The other parts of the material are more in-depth in character and are intended, in the first place, for prescribers and pharmacists and are only in Swedish, see link on right.

The material here may be used freely, whether to link to or to print out.

Supports and facilitates dialogue

We want to make it easier for pharmacy staff and prescribers of medicines to inform the patient on possible generic substitution that takes place at the pharmacy. We intend to do this through offering information material to support the dialogue concerning substitution.

We hope that the material will contribute to reassuring the patient where generic substitution is concerned.

No-one should need to pay more than necessary

Medicines are substituted in line with the rules for generic substitution so that no-one has to pay more than necessary for medicines, whether patients or the community as a whole.

If a generic substitution is relevant for a customer at the pharmacy, the staff will offer a medicine that is equivalent to that written by the prescriber. Equivalent medicines contain the same active substance in the same quantity; they have the same medical effect and function in the same way in the body. They are thereby interchangeable with one another.

It is the Medical Products Agency (MPA) that has assessed that the medicines in question are interchangeable with one another.

With the generic substitution that is carried out at pharmacies, a price competition arises between pharmaceutical companies. Thanks to this, society is able to save several billion kroner every year.

In consultation with several organisations

All material is produced in consultation with patient organisations, pensioner associations, regional health authorities, the Swedish Society of Medicine, pharmacy operators, the Swedish Pharmaceutical Society through the Swedish Academy of Pharmaceutical Sciences and the Swedish Pharmacy Association. The information is based on relevant ordinances and guidance, research results and other studies and reports as well as interviews and documentation from Läkemedelsupplysningen.

Folder about generic substitution

Here you will find the folder about the generic substitution system in eight language versions.

Page information


Last updated
31 October 2022
To top