About the data
What this is
ApprovalTrail answers one question for every health product sold in Canada: is it approved? It puts Health Canada’s separate product databases on one site, with a page per product, per company and per ingredient. ApprovalTrail is independent: it is not Health Canada and is not affiliated with the Government of Canada. It copies public records, links to each official record, and gives no medical advice.
Where it comes from
Five sources, all published by Health Canada under the Open Government Licence – Canada:
- Drug Product Database: every drug with a Drug Identification Number (DIN): prescription and over-the-counter drugs, vaccines and biologics, veterinary drugs, disinfectants, radiopharmaceuticals. Includes cancelled products.
- Notice of Compliance database: Health Canada’s approvals of drug submissions since 1994.
- Licensed Natural Health Products Database: every natural health product licence (NPN or DIN-HM): vitamins, minerals, herbal and homeopathic products, probiotics.
- Medical Devices Active Licence Listing: licences for Class II, III and IV medical devices, active and archived. Most Class I devices need no licence and are not listed.
- Recalls and Safety Alerts: the recalls and alerts for health products (food, vehicle and consumer product recalls are left out).
The databases are downloaded from Health Canada’s open data services and rebuilt here about once a week. Data status shows the dates and counts.
Statuses
A drug’s status is the Drug Product Database’s own: Marketed (authorized and sold), Approved (authorized, not yet reported as sold), Dormant (authorized, not sold for 12 months), or one of several kinds of Cancelled. A cancellation is most often the company’s own business decision; the database does not say why, and neither does this site.
A natural health product’s licence is Active, Discontinued (by its holder), under a Stop sale order, Suspended or Cancelled. Under the last three, the product cannot be sold legally in Canada. An active licence means the product may be sold; it does not mean it is on store shelves (the official record carries a separate, voluntary market status). Medical device licences are active or archived.
Why some licence holders are not named
This site never names an individual. Most licence holders are companies, but some are people: a practitioner who holds licences in their own name, or a practitioner’s professional corporation. A holder whose name is only a person’s name, with or without a title, is not named. Companies and trade names are named, including those carrying a founder’s name.
Products of a holder not named still have their pages, with the holder left out (the official record, linked from each page, names them). A product whose own name carries that holder’s name has no page. Some companies are left out as a result; that is deliberate. 70 holder names are not shown.
No contact names and no street addresses are shown: company pages give the city, province or state, and country.
How recalls are matched
Health Canada’s recall notices do not carry a DIN, NPN or licence number, only a title and a product name. A notice is shown on a product page only when it opens with, or names as its product, that product’s brand word: a word of at least five letters that is not an ingredient, a common word or a company’s own name, used by no more than twenty products of at most two companies. The page says which word matched. A notice can still cover a different product of the same brand, or only some lots: read the notice.
What is left out
Adverse reaction reports (they describe people, and the reporting service is not open to bulk download). The directions, doses and risk statements on natural health product licences: they are on the official record and the label, and a partial copy could mislead. Product monographs and prices.
Corrections
The records are Health Canada’s and the companies’. To correct a record, contact Health Canada; the fix reaches this site with the next update. Errors in how this site shows a record can be reported to the site.
Visit counts
The site uses Google Analytics to count visits and see which pages people read. It has no accounts and asks for nothing about you.