medicinemost

Medicinemost is a term used in pharmacovigilance and health-data analytics to describe the category of medicines that are most frequently used within a population. The term is not tied to a single organization or dataset, but rather to two related concepts that appear in research and policy discussions: a ranking of medicines by usage and a methodology or platform for compiling such rankings from multiple sources.

As a ranking, medicinemost typically lists medicines according to metrics such as prescription counts, dispensed units, defined daily doses (DDD), or total expenditure. The ranking may be stratified by region, age group, care setting (primary care versus hospital), or therapeutic category. As a platform or methodology, medicinemost refers to processes for collecting, standardising, and updating usage data from diverse sources like electronic health records, pharmacy claims, hospital dispensing systems, and national formularies, with careful attention to data quality and comparability.

Methodologically, medicinemost relies on coding standards (such as active ingredients and ATC/INN classifications), reconciliation of overlapping data, and normalization to allow meaningful comparisons over time. The approach supports risk assessment, supply-chain planning, and formulary decision-making, as well as research into prescribing patterns and public health needs.

Limitations include incomplete capture of over-the-counter medications, regional data gaps, privacy concerns, and time lags in data reporting. Variations in prescribing practices and health-system structures can also affect comparability across settings. Medicinemost remains a concept used to frame discussions about drug utilization and health-system analytics.