Introduction: Individual-level data on all prescription drugs sold in Danish community pharmacies has since 1994 been recorded in the Register of Medicinal Products Statistics of the Danish Medicines Agency. Content: The register subset, termed the Danish National Prescription Registry (DNPR), contains information on dispensed prescriptions, including variables at the level of the drug user, the prescriber, and the pharmacy. Validity and coverage: Reimbursement-driven record keeping, with automated bar-code-based data entry provides data of high quality, including detailed information on the dispensed drug. Conclusion: The possibility of linkage with many other nationwide individual-level data sources renders the DNPR a very powerful pharmacoepidemiological tool.

Denmark has a long tradition of creating nationwide administrative and health registries. ^{1, 2} Examples include its registries on causes of death, ³ hospitalizations ⁴ and cancer, ⁵ and on socioeconomic parameters such as income ⁶ and education. ⁷ A registry central to Danish pharmacoepidemiology is the Register of Medicinal Product Statistics, established in 1994. This registry includes data on all drugs sold in primary care or purchased for use in Danish hospitals. Whereas aggregate data on gross sales of drugs are freely available online [www.medstat.dk], ⁸ individual-level data on prescriptions filled by Danish residents at community pharmacies are available as an independent sub-registry—the National Prescription Registry (NPR). ⁹ NPR data have been available to researchers through Statistics Denmark since 2003, and more recently also through the Danish Health Data Authority. Given these recent changes in data access and the need to evaluate the Registry’s strengths and limitations, this data resource profile provides a review of the NPR, with emphasis on its role in research.