Number of shortages at similar level to previous years

In 2025, Finnish Medicines Agency Fimea received 2,783 shortage reports from pharmaceutical companies. In 2024, this figure was remarkably similar at 2,676 reports. 

The reasons behind shortages have not changed significantly in recent years. Marketing authorisation holders noted production-related issues, such as lack of capacity and process disruptions, as the reason for their shortages. 

While the number of reports seems large, only a small part of the shortages have a significant effect on patient treatment. 

“Most shortages can be mitigated at the pharmacy with a substitute product,” says Senior Officer Riikka Holthöger from Fimea.

Shortages can easily spill over to other products

In 2025, a majority of the shortage reports were on medicines that affect the nervous system. There were notable shortages on psychosis, depression and ADHD medications as well as painkillers.

According to Holthöfer, shortages can increasingly expand to products with the same medicinal substance. Examples include olanzapine, used to treat schizophrenia, and mesalazine, used to treat ulcerous colitis and Crohn’s disease, both of which saw rapidly expanding shortages in 2025.

“These events put continued treatments at risk and add significantly to the workload of health care professionals.”

There were significant shortages of ADHD medicines in 2023 and 2024, the availability of which did improve in 2025.

Ongoing international cooperation to improve medicine availability

In the EU, there are several projects to improve medicine availability. There were also improvements to the Nordic cooperation in 2025. Among others, the European Medicines Agency EMA’s shortage monitoring platform rolled out last year. 

“The platform improves foresight and crisis management and will also expand to support official reports on critical shortages.” 

Fimea also had an active hand in the preparatory process for the EU Critical Medicines Act. This is a new regulation that aims to reinforce European supply and production chains of critical medicines. 

“To prevent shortages requires close cooperation by the pharmaceutical sector as a whole,” says Holthöfer.

Read more

More general information on the availability of medicines in 2025 in the Sic! publication: What did the availability of medicines look like in 2025? (In Finnish)