Healthcare
Farmacotherapeutisch Kompas
The Farmacotherapeutisch Kompas is published by the Dutch National Health Care Institute and presents itself as independent medicines information for healthcare professionals — in particular for doctors with prescribing authority and those training for it. It has three entry points: medicines, described per active substance; medicine groups, in which agents with comparable properties are set side by side; and indications, with advice, treatment plans and background information. That third entry point is what makes the Kompas distinctive: it describes not only the agents but the place they occupy within an indication.
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What this source does not give you
The Kompas is not official product information. Its editors combine sources and deliberately depart from them where practice requires it: dosing advice in reduced kidney function may come from the G-Standaard and differ from the SmPC, and off-label indications are included where they appear in recognised guidelines with dosing recommendations. The registered text remains the SmPC issued by the Dutch or European medicines agency. Nor is it patient information: the texts assume prior pharmacotherapeutic knowledge.
Frequently asked questions
- What is the content of the Kompas based on?
- On several sources at once. Primarily on the SmPC texts of the Dutch Medicines Evaluation Board and the European Medicines Agency, supplemented with FNA formulation information from the KNMP, with evidence-based guidelines — Dutch GP standards in particular — and with reference works such as Stockley's Drug Interactions and the G-Standaard. The editors integrate those sources and add context; the Kompas is therefore broader than product information alone.
- Is the Kompas the same as a medicine's SmPC?
- No, and that distinction is worth holding on to. The SmPC is the registered product information as established at authorisation. The Kompas adds practice knowledge and deliberately departs from it on specific points — for instance in dosing in reduced kidney function, where the G-Standaard may advise differently, and in off-label indications that appear in recognised guidelines with dosing recommendations. Anyone answering a regulatory question cites the SmPC; anyone answering a practice question may cite the Kompas but should note that it departs from the SmPC.
- Who establishes the content?
- The Kompas has its own editorial team at the Dutch National Health Care Institute. For the indication texts the Institute's scientific advisory board, the Farmacotherapeutisch Kompas Committee, is consulted. The indication text is therefore the component with the most demanding review procedure — and also the one where the Kompas most clearly takes a position on a medicine's place in treatment.
- How does it differ from Apotheek.nl?
- The audience, and with it everything else. The Kompas is written for healthcare professionals with prescribing authority and assumes prior pharmacotherapeutic knowledge; Apotheek.nl is public information from the pharmacists' association and states explicitly that it replaces neither a consultation nor the package leaflet. The two sources can cover the same medicine and still give a different answer, because they answer a different question. So do not conflate them in a citation.