ParseForge
EMA Medicines Scraper
parseforge/ema-medicines-scraper
BusinessOtherEducation
Scrapes the EMA medicines registry returning name, active substance, therapeutic area, status, marketing authorisation holder, and special designation flags for each medicine.
- Total users
- 2
- Monthly active
- 1
- Total runs
- 110
- Bookmarked
- 0
- Rating
- Not rated yet
- Last modified
- 9 days ago
Overview
EMA Medicines Scraper
Scrape detailed medicine records from the European Medicines Agency (EMA), up to a million per run. Each record contains the medicine name, active substance, therapeutic area, authorisation status, marketing authorisation holder, and special designations. No API key or registration needed. Export to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML.
The EMA official website offers a public medicines registry, but browsing it manually page by page makes large-scale analysis tedious. This scraper reads that public registry directly and lets you filter by type, status, therapeutic area, ATC code, and special designations like orphan drug or biosimilar. You get a structured dataset for all matched human or veterinary medicines, ready for research, competitive intelligence, or compliance tracking.
| Who uses it | What they scrape European Medicines Agency (EMA) for |
|---|---|
| Pharma market intelligence analysts | Track which companies are getting marketing authorisations in a specific therapeutic area. |
| Regulatory affairs professionals | Monitor withdrawn, refused, or suspended medicines for compliance reports. |
| Clinical researchers | Identify all EMA-authorised treatments for a disease to map the competitive landscape. |
| Pharmacovigilance teams | Build a list of medicines under additional monitoring for safety surveillance. |
What it does
This Actor collects EMA medicines data filtered by search query, medicine type, status, therapeutic area, ATC code, marketing authorisation holder, and special flags, and returns each medicine as a flat row.
- 🔍 Search by name or INN: Type a medicine brand name or active substance and retrieve only matching entries.
- 📁 Category filters: Narrow results by human or veterinary type, one or more therapeutic areas, or a single ATC top-level code.
- 🚩 Special designation toggles: Restrict output to orphan drugs, biosimilars, medicines with conditional approval, or those under additional monitoring.
- 📊 Status sorting: Collect only authorised, withdrawn, refused, or suspended products to build custom pipelines.
Results export to CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML, or straight from the API.
What you can do with European Medicines Agency (EMA) data
💊 Monitor new oncology approvals.
A competitive intelligence analyst runs the Actor weekly with medicineType set to 'human', therapeuticArea set to 'cancer', and status set to 'authorised', then exports the list to Excel for a pipeline report.
📋 Build an orphan drug watchlist.
A regulatory affairs manager pulls all medicines with orphan designation to stay ahead of rare disease treatments entering the EU market.
⚠️ Audit withdrawn and refused products.
A compliance officer filters by status 'withdrawn' or 'refused' to maintain an updated internal register of products no longer authorised.
🐾 Catalogue veterinary medicines by ATC code.
A veterinary researcher selects medicineType 'veterinary' and an ATC code like 'QJ' to collect all anti-infectives for animals and structure them by marketing authorisation holder.
Why choose this scraper
| What you get | |
|---|---|
| No API setup | Scrapes the public EMA medicines registry directly with no account or token. |
| Rich therapeutic filters | Choose from 50+ predefined therapeutic areas, from ADHD to weight loss. |
| Regulatory flags built in | Toggle orphan designation, biosimilar status, conditional approval, and additional monitoring. |
| Flexible volume | Set maxItems from 1 to 1,000,000 to fit a quick lookup or a large extraction. |
How it compares
This comparison is based on the features listed in the descriptions of other EMA-specific scrapers on Apify.
| Feature | ParseForge | EMA Medicines Scraper 💊 (shahidirfan) | EMA EPAR Lookup - One-Shot EU Medicines Snapshot |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full-text search by medicine name or active substance | Yes | Not listed | Yes |
| Filter by therapeutic area (50+ predefined categories) | Yes | Not listed | Not listed |
| Filter by marketing authorisation holder (company name) | Yes | Not listed | Not listed |
| Filter by medicine type (human or veterinary) | Yes | Not listed | Not listed |
| Filter by special designations (orphan, biosimilar, conditional approval, additional monitoring) | Yes | Not listed | Not listed |
| Filter by ATC code top-level classification | Yes | Not listed | Not listed |
Configure the run
Drive the Actor with a medicine name keyword and narrow the run by type, authorisation status, therapeutic area, ATC code, marketing authorisation holder, and special designation flags. Filters are applied before writing results so your dataset contains only matching rows. The Input tab lists every parameter.
A first run with the defaults:
{
"maxItems": 10,
"medicineType": "human"
}
A larger pull:
{
"maxItems": 200,
"medicineType": "human"
}
Pricing
Pay-per-result: $0.005 per result collected. You pay only for the results written to your dataset.
| Results collected | Approximate cost |
|---|---|
| 100 results | $0.50 |
| 1,000 results | $5.00 |
| 10,000 results | $50.00 |
New Apify accounts start with $5 in free credit.
Free users
Free-plan runs return up to 10 results as a preview. Upgrade your Apify plan to collect up to 1,000,000 results per run.
Run it
- Create a free Apify account with $5 in credit.
- Open the EMA Medicines Scraper.
- Set your inputs and any filters, then click Start.
- Export the results as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML from the Dataset tab.
Run it programmatically through the Apify API (run-sync-get-dataset-items) or the ApifyClient for JavaScript and Python.
Use with AI agents (MCP)
Give an AI agent live access to European Medicines Agency (EMA) through the Model Context Protocol. Add the Actor to Claude, Cursor, or any MCP client:
claude mcp add --transport http apify "https://mcp.apify.com?tools=parseforge/ema-medicines-scraper"
Then prompt it in plain language to run the scraper and read back the results.
Troubleshooting
I got an empty dataset even though I know the medicine exists.
Check that your searchQuery matches the exact spelling used in the EMA registry. Also verify the status filter is not excluding the medicine; set status to 'Any status' and try again.
The run times out before I get all the results.
Reduce the maxItems value and run multiple smaller batches, or narrow the filters to a specific therapeutic area or status. This avoids hitting memory limits.
My marketing authorisation holder filter returns no results.
Company names on the EMA site can vary slightly. Try using a partial name or searching without the filter first to confirm how the name is stored.
The dataset contains fewer records than I expected for a large therapeutic area.
Make sure the status filter is not set to a narrow value like 'refused'. Set it to 'Any status' and check if the count matches your expectations.
FAQ
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| What data fields does the Actor return for each medicine? | It returns name, active substance, INN, therapeutic area, medicine type, ATC code, marketing authorisation holder, authorisation status, and flags for additional monitoring, orphan designation, biosimilar, and conditional approval. |
| Can I search by the active substance name, not the brand name? | Yes. The searchQuery field performs a full-text search across medicine names, INN, and active substances, so entering 'trastuzumab' will return all relevant entries. |
| Does this support both human and veterinary medicines? | Yes. Set the medicineType filter to 'human' or 'veterinary' to restrict the output accordingly. |
| How do I get all authorised cancer drugs? | Set medicineType to 'human', therapeuticArea to 'cancer', status to 'authorised', and choose a maxItems value high enough to capture every result. |
| Is there a way to filter by the company that holds the marketing authorisation? | Yes, use the marketingAuthorisationHolder field. Type a company name and the scraper returns only medicines linked to that holder. |
| Does the Actor handle pagination for large result sets? | It reads all pages of the EMA medicines registry automatically up to maxItems. Set a high maxItems limit to retrieve thousands of records in one run. |
| What export formats are supported? | The dataset can be exported from your Apify run as CSV, JSON, Excel, or XML. |
| Do I need an EMA account or API key to use this? | No. The Actor reads the public EMA medicines search interface, so no login, registration, or API key is required. |
Related actors
Browse the full ParseForge collection for more scrapers.
🆘 Need help? Email parseforge@protonmail.com with your run ID, your input, and what you expected.
⚠️ Disclaimer. This Actor is unofficial and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by European Medicines Agency. It collects only publicly available data. You are responsible for using the collected data in compliance with the source's terms of service and applicable data-protection laws, including GDPR, CCPA, and PIPL. Do not use it to collect personal data unlawfully.
Input
| Field | Type | What it does | Default |
|---|---|---|---|
| maxItems | integer | How many medicines to collect per run. | 10 |
| searchQuery | string | Full-text search across medicine name, INN, or active substance. | not set |
| medicineType | string (2 options) | Human or veterinary medicines. | human |
| status | string (5 options) | Filter by authorisation status. | not set |
| therapeuticArea | string (57 options) | Filter by therapeutic area. | not set |
| atcCode | string (15 options) | Filter by Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical (ATC) top-level classification. | not set |
| marketingAuthorisationHolder | string | Filter by marketing authorisation holder (company name). | not set |
| additionalMonitoring | boolean | Only medicines under additional monitoring (black inverted triangle). | false |
| orphan | boolean | Only medicines with orphan designation (rare diseases). | false |
| biosimilar | boolean | Only biosimilar medicines. | false |
| conditionalApproval | boolean | Only medicines with conditional marketing authorisation. | false |
Pricing
from $3.75 per 1,000 results
| Charged for | What it is | Price each |
|---|---|---|
| Result Item | Charged once per result collected. | $0.00375 to $0.005 |
Tiered: the lower figure is the price on a higher Apify plan. Billing and the free credit live on Apify.
API
One POST returns the dataset directly. Same shape for every scraper in the library, so swapping the slug is the only change.
curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/parseforge~ema-medicines-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=$APIFY_TOKEN" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{
"helloWorld": 123
}' Examples
Input that runs as-is.
{
"helloWorld": 123
} Reviews
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Issues
We build and maintain this scraper, so a problem with it comes to us. Report it on the Apify listing and the thread stays attached to the scraper where the next person can find it: open an issue.
Broken and urgent, or you would rather not post in public? Write to parseforge@protonmail.com and it reaches the people who wrote it.