Health Canada Drug Product Database (DPD)
Pricing
$3.00 / 1,000 drug products
Health Canada Drug Product Database (DPD)
Canadian drug products from Health Canada's official DPD API: DIN, brand, status, active ingredients and strengths, class, sponsor. Filter by ingredient, status, company.
What it does
Pulls all drug products from Health Canada's official Drug Product Database API and joins each product with its latest status and its active ingredients. You get one clean row per product, filtered by brand, DIN, ingredient, company, class, status or update date. Each run makes exactly 3 bulk API calls (products, status, active ingredients), 1 second apart. The company endpoint (sponsor addresses and contacts) is never called.
Source: Drug Product Database on open.canada.ca, DPD API.
Who it's for
Pharmacy and health-tech apps (DIN lookup, ingredient search), generic-drug and market analysts, pharmacovigilance and formulary teams, and researchers tracking marketed vs. cancelled products.
Input
| Key | Notes |
|---|---|
brandName | contains, e.g. Tylenol |
din | exact 8-digit DIN |
ingredient | active ingredient contains, e.g. acetaminophen |
company | company contains |
productClass | Human, Veterinary, Disinfectant, Radiopharmaceutical |
status | contains, e.g. Marketed |
updatedFrom | YYYY-MM-DD |
maxItems | default 1000 |
Example: {"ingredient": "acetaminophen", "status": "Marketed", "productClass": "Human"}
Output
drugCode, din, brandName, descriptor, productClass, status, statusDate, originalMarketDate, activeIngredients[] (name, strength, strengthUnit, dosageValue, dosageUnit), numberOfActiveIngredients, aiGroupNumber, companyName, companyNameWithheld, companyLegalFormDetected, lastUpdateDate, url, source, licence.
Privacy
- The data is reduced, not anonymous: a DIN or brand can still identify a marketed product and its sponsor.
- The company endpoint, which holds sponsor street addresses and contact details, is never called, so no addresses or contacts appear.
- Individual sponsors are removed. A sponsor name with no legal-form or business words (such as Inc, Labs, Pharma, Products or Canada) is treated as a person if it matches one of three patterns: one person ("RAY IRASTORZA", "DR. JOHN SMITH", "SM BOUCHARD"), two people joined by & / AND ("LISA & GERRY FREUNDL"), or SURNAME (GIVEN NAME) ("FIORE (VICTOR)"). For these,
companyNameis set to null andcompanyNameWithheldto true. On the Oct 16, 2026 live data this affected 5 sponsor names on 10 of 58,367 products. Brands named after a person (e.g. "MARY COHR") are also blanked; this is deliberately cautious. companyNameis the product sponsor or manufacturer exactly as Health Canada publishes it. These are drug-authorization holders. The DPD writes names in capitals, often without a legal suffix, socompanyLegalFormDetectedflags whether a legal-form word was found (about 87% of products). Names without one (e.g. "ABBOTT LABORATORIES") are kept, not withheld.- The status
lot_numberfield is not exported.
Licence and terms
- Licence: Open Government Licence – Canada, which allows use "including for commercial purposes" with attribution. Every row carries the attribution.
- Automated access: this is the official public API that Health Canada lists on open.canada.ca.
health-products.canada.cahas no robots.txt (404), so nothing is disallowed, and no terms were found that ban automated use. The Actor makes 3 requests per run. - Independent; not endorsed by Health Canada.
Pricing
Price: $0.003 per result, no start fee (pay per event, one result = one drug product). 1,000 products cost $3.00. All ~13,400 marketed products cost about $40.
Limits
- English values only. Data is as current as the DPD (updated nightly).
- Route, dosage form, schedule and therapeutic class aren't included in v0.1 (each would mean another bulk call).
