Italy has added a regional layer to its 2024 OsMed medicines-use analysis, giving regions a common basis for comparing pharmaceutical expenditure and use. The reports are an access-landscape and expenditure-monitoring tool rather than a procedural change, but they make regional differences in medicines use more visible across community and hospital care.
The Italian Medicines Agency (Agenzia italiana del farmaco, AIFA) published Report regionali sul consumo dei farmaci in Italia – anno 2024 on 21 April 2026. AIFA says each regional report uses the same data basis as the national OsMed report and covers National Health Service-funded medicines and private purchases by citizens.
The reports draw on the OsMed flow and the medicines traceability flow. They cover community pharmacy supply, direct distribution, distribution on behalf of the National Health Service (Servizio sanitario nazionale, SSN), hospital supply and medicines bought privately by citizens.
AIFA does not present a single narrative conclusion across the reports. Instead, the regional documents provide standard benchmark indicators that compare each region with the national profile. Nationally, medicines bought by public healthcare structures accounted for gross spending of €18.06 billion in 2024. Reimbursed community medicines accounted for €10.03 billion, while private gross spending by citizens reached €8.66 billion.
The reports also measure consumption using defined daily doses (DDDs), meaning the assumed average daily adult maintenance dose used as a standard unit for comparing medicines use. National consumption reached 205.5 DDDs per 1,000 inhabitants per day for medicines bought by public healthcare structures, 1,139.9 DDDs in the reimbursed community channel and 555.7 DDDs for private purchases.
AIFA presents the reports as a tool for benchmarking between and within regions, identifying areas of higher concern, improving allocation of pharmaceutical resources and supporting more appropriate medicines use. The common format should support closer scrutiny of local medicines governance where spending patterns, hospital purchasing, private expenditure or use of off-patent medicines diverge from the national profile.
Source: Italian Medicines Agency, AIFA
Link: Report regionali sul consumo dei farmaci in Italia – anno 2024 (Regional reports on medicines consumption in Italy – 2024)
Date: 21 April 2026
