About 7,3 million prescription medicine packs dispensed in Latvia in the first quarter of the year
The Latvian Medicines Verification Organisation (LZVO) has compiled performance indicators for the Latvian Medicines Verification System (LZVS) for the first three months of 2026, including data on transactions carried out in the system, end users, alerts, and their most frequent causes.
There are two types of transactions with packs of medicinal products – one is verification of the authenticity of the unique identifier on that pack; the other is decommissioning of the pack from the system. In pharmacies and healthcare institutions unique identifiers are decommissioned from the system when the medicine is supplied to the public.
In the first three months of 2026, a total of 30 million transactions were performed in the LZVS, of which 7.3 million authentic packs of prescription medicine were dispensed to public through pharmacies and healthcare institutions.
The compiled data show that by April 1, 2026, a total of 1173 users had connected to the Latvian Medicines Verification System — pharmacies, hospital pharmacies, pharmaceutical wholesalers, and healthcare institutions authorized to procure medicines (hospitals, outpatient clinics, doctors’ practices, dental clinics). LZVO also provides access to the system for the State Agency of Medicines and the Health Inspectorate for market surveillance and investigation of potential falsification incidents.
The proportion of alert notifications in Latvia during the first three months of 2026 reached 0.01% of the total number of transactions, which is considered a very good result. Data analysis shows that the causes of alerts detected in Latvia are most often related to technical errors in scanners and/or software, or human error; once these issues are resolved, the packages are successfully verified and decommissioned from the system.
Compared to the same period of the previous year, the number of alert notifications in the first three months of 2025 has not changed significantly, indicating stability in the system’s operation and the day-to-day activities of end users.
Overall, the system’s performance and operation during this period can be assessed as stable, and it functions in accordance with the requirements of the Delegated Regulation.
In March, occasional technical issues in the LZVS were observed, causing short-term disruptions in system operation, during which it was periodically not possible to verify medicines. The technical issue on March 3 was caused by general connectivity problems of the internet provider of LZVS developer and supplier “Arvato Systems GmbH.” On March 21, the system became unavailable through existing connection addresses, preventing the redirection of requests to Oracle data centers, which affected medicine verification for a significant number of users. The detailed cause of the incident is still under investigation.
LZVO has not received any reports of potential cases of falsified medicines in the legal supply chain. Thanks to the LZVS, prescription medicines dispensed in pharmacies and healthcare institutions are verified and authentic, allowing residents to feel confident that the medicines they purchase are not counterfeit and contain the substances indicated on the packaging in the correct amounts.