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Skillsisraeli-drug-database

israeli-drug-database

Data & analytics

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Updated 10-16 08:40

About this skill

Israeli Drug Database

Critical Note

This skill provides DRUG INFORMATION ONLY, not medical advice.

Hard refusal rules. These are not style guidance.

  • Never state a dose, a maximum daily dose, or a dosing schedule, even one you read in a leaflet. Return the leaflet itself (the brochure[] entry from GetSpecificDrug) and send the user to a pharmacist.
  • Never answer a drug-interaction question. Cross-referencing two active ingredients is a clinical judgement. Name the question and route it to a pharmacist.
  • Never state whether a drug is safe in pregnancy or breastfeeding. Route to the Israeli Teratology Information Service, which is the MoH's own referral for this question.
  • Never state prescription status, basket status or price from memory or from a table in this skill. Query the registry for the specific product, and say which registration number you answered for.
  • Where a claim cannot be verified from the registry or the leaflet, say so and direct the user to a pharmacist or physician. Do not guess and do not interpolate.

Drug coverage and pricing change. Copay is set by the user's kupat cholim, not by this skill and not by the registry.

Instructions

Step 1: Identify Drug Query Type

Query Action
Drug lookup Search registry by name or ingredient
Health basket status Check sal briut coverage tier
Generic alternatives Find equivalent generics by active ingredient
Drug pricing Look up regulated maximum price
Safety info Return the consumer leaflet and route the question. Do NOT answer doses, interactions or pregnancy safety
Prescription status Check if OTC or prescription required

Step 2: Drug Lookup

Search the MoH drug registry:

  • By trade name: Search Hebrew or English brand name (e.g., "Acamol", "Optalgin")
  • By generic/active ingredient: Search by active substance (e.g., "paracetamol", "dipyrone")
  • By registration number: Direct lookup by mispar rishum

Key fields returned:

Field Hebrew Description
Trade name shem miskhari Brand name as marketed
Generic name shem bilti muskam / shem generi International nonproprietary name (INN)
Active ingredient chomer peeil Active substance and strength
Dosage form tzurat matan Tablet, capsule, injection, etc.
Manufacturer yatzran Company holding marketing authorization
ATC code kod ATC WHO anatomical therapeutic chemical code
Registration status matzav rishum Active, suspended, or cancelled
Prescription type (no such field) Returned as the boolean prescription on SearchByName, and as prose in limitations on GetSpecificDrug. There is no sug mircham field

The live registry API. The canonical machine-readable source is the MoH Israel Drug Registry backend at israeldrugs.health.gov.il/GovServiceList/IDRServer/. All calls are POST with Content-Type: application/json. The endpoint names and payload shapes below were read from the registry app's own client (/scripts/services/serverConnection.js) and each was called live on 2026-08-27.

Endpoint Payload
SearchByName {val, prescription, healthServices, pageIndex, orderBy}
GetSpecificDrug {dragRegNum}
SearchByBarcode {barcode, prescription}
SearchGeneric {val, name, matanId, packageId, atcId, pageIndex, orderBy}
SearchByAdv advanced filters, including isGSL, veterinary, cytotoxic, healthServices
GetAtcList / GetMatanList / GetPackageList {}, return the ATC, route-of-administration and package-type lookup lists

Two endpoint names in earlier versions of this skill do not exist. SearchGenericByDragRegNum and SearchByPackageBarcode both return the server's generic HTML error page: the same 3,438-byte page a deliberately fabricated path returns, differing only in an incident number (מספר תקלה). Use SearchGeneric and SearchByBarcode.

Status codes carry no signal on this host. A fabricated path answers HTTP 200 with an HTML error page; a real endpoint under load answers HTTP 502 with a maintenance page. Assert on the BODY: a successful call returns Content-Type: application/json. Anything that does not parse as JSON is a failure, whatever the status line says. Sending a wrong parameter name (an older version of this skill documented prefix on SearchByName) also returns the HTML error page rather than a validation message.

The two main endpoints return DIFFERENT schemas. Do not carry a field name across.

SearchByName results[] GetSpecificDrug
Name dragHebName, dragEnName same
Reg. number dragRegNum (e.g. 020 16 20534 00) same
Ingredient activeComponents[].componentName, activeComponentsCompareName activeMetirals[].ingredientsDesc + dosage
Marketing authorisation holder dragRegOwner regOwnerName, manufacturers[]
Prescription prescription isPrescription (see the warning below)
Price customerPrice (string), packagesPrices[] maxPrice (number)
Basket health (boolean) health, plus salList[], frameworkOfInclusion, indicationIncludedInTheBasket, limitations, dateOfInclusion
ATC not returned atc[] with atc4Code/atc5Code
Leaflet not returned brochure[]
Other barcodes (a single string, not a list), indications, iscanceled dragIndication, useInClalit, regDate, regExpDate, iscanceled

Never take prescription status from GetSpecificDrug. The two endpoints disagree. For Keytruda (154 38 34448 00) SearchByName returns prescription: true while GetSpecificDrug returns isPrescription: false, which would report an intravenous oncology biologic as available without a prescription. Use SearchByName, and still tell the user to confirm with the pharmacy.

Results are paginated, 10 per page. Each result carries a pages count. acamol returns 10 results across 2 pages. An agent that reads only page one and says "these are all the products" is wrong; loop pageIndex to the pages count before making any completeness claim.

A customerPrice of "0" does not mean free. It means the product is not on the retail price list, which is the normal case for hospital-administered drugs. Keytruda returns "0".

Treat this as an undocumented public backend: cache results and do not bulk-scrape.

Step 3: Health Basket Coverage

Being "in the basket" is not a yes/no answer for most expensive drugs. It is per indication. This is the single most consequential thing to get right here. GetSpecificDrug returns far more than the health boolean:

  • salList[] -- one entry per basket-covered indication, each with indication, include_date, clinic_desc and sickness_state. Keytruda has 101 entries.
  • frameworkOfInclusion -- the conditions of entitlement in prose, including line-of-therapy and duration limits.
  • limitations -- who may prescribe. Acamol: תרופה שאושרה לשימוש כללי בקופ'ח. Keytruda: תרופה מוגבלת לרישום ע'י רופא מומחה או הגבלה אחרת.
  • indicationIncludedInTheBasket, dateOfInclusion.

So: empty salList plus a general-use limitations means unrestricted. A populated salList means entitlement exists ONLY for the listed indications. Answering "yes, it is in the basket" from health: true alone will tell a patient whose indication is not on that list that they are covered when they are not. Read the list, say how many indications it holds, and tell the user their entitlement depends on their own diagnosis, which only their physician can match.

Copay: the registry does not know it, and there is no single national number. Each kupah sets its own schedule under the National Health Insurance Law, and Kol Zchut records that the collection rules differ between them ("The collection arrangements of the health funds are not identical"). The structure is a banded percentage with a floor, not a fixed shekel amount per package. Leumit's published schedule is a worked example (read the current one, this is dated):

  • No generic alternative: up to 20.80 NIS, pay the consumer price; between 20.80 and 156.30, pay 20.80; above 156.30, pay 15% of the price.
  • A generic alternative exists: up to 20.80, pay the consumer price; above 20.80, pay 10% of the price or 20.80, whichever is higher.

There is also a quarterly ceiling for chronic patients, above which the drugs are free. As of May 2026 Kol Zchut records Clalit at 1,190 NIS per quarter and Maccabi at 1,137 NIS per quarter, with lower ceilings for pension-age members receiving income support. Separate exemption tracks exist for severe illness and other populations.

Never quote a copay figure of your own. Give the mechanism, then send the user to their own kupah's schedule.

Price is not copay. customerPrice / maxPrice is the regulated maximum consumer price, a ceiling on what a pharmacy may charge. A basket-covered drug bought through a kupah is priced by the kupah's copay schedule instead.

Freshness. The basket list is closed and updated annually. The legally binding instrument is צו ביטוח בריאות ממלכתי (תרופות בסל שירותי הבריאות), תשנ"ה-1995, not a web page: Kol Zchut states רשימת התרופות הנכללות בסל היא רשימה סגורה שמתעדכנת כל שנה. Do not promise that the update lands in January; the effective date of a given year's expansion is set by the director-general circular for that year. Confirm against the current order.

Step 4: Generic Alternatives

To find generic alternatives:

  1. Identify the active ingredient (chomer peeil) of the brand-name drug
  2. Call SearchByName with the ingredient and match on activeComponentsCompareName, which is the exact-match ingredient field (Acamol returns PARACETAMOL). Loop pageIndex to the pages count, or your list is silently truncated at 10.
  3. Filter out iscanceled: true products.
  4. Compare same ingredient, same strength, same dosage form, different dragRegOwner.
  5. Compare the actual customerPrice values you retrieved. Do not quote a percentage saving. Real paracetamol products returned on one page ranged from 12.10 to 28.60 NIS, so a single headline figure would have been wrong in both directions.

SearchGeneric also exists, but it needs matanId / packageId / atcId values taken from GetMatanList / GetPackageList / GetAtcList, and returns an empty list when they do not line up. The ingredient-match route above is the reliable one.

Basket and prescription status are per registration number, not per brand. Verified live on 2026-08-27: LOSEC 20 MG is prescription: false, health: false while LOSEC 20 MG RX is prescription: true, health: true. ACAMOL is health: true but ACAMOL TEVA CAPLETS and ACAMOL FOCUS are health: false. All three GLUCOPHAGE XR strengths are health: false. Never answer for a brand; answer for a dragRegNum and say which one.

Common Israeli generics. All six brands below were confirmed registered and not cancelled on 2026-08-27, with the ingredients shown. Use this to recognise a name, never to answer basket, prescription or price questions: those are per registration number and must be queried.

Brand Name Generic Name Active Ingredient
Acamol Paracetamol generics Paracetamol
Optalgin Dipyrone generics Dipyrone (metamizole)
Ibufen Ibuprofen generics Ibuprofen
Losec Omeprazole generics Omeprazole
Lipitor Atorvastatin generics Atorvastatin
Norvasc Amlodipine generics Amlodipine

Dipyrone (Optalgin) needs a caveat. It is sold over the counter in Israel, but it is restricted elsewhere: in 2018 the EMA reviewed metamizole-containing medicines and recommended harmonising the maximum daily dose and the contraindications in pregnancy and breastfeeding, noting the medicine "may occasionally cause severe side effects, such as effects on the blood", with a binding Commission decision in March 2019. If a user compares Israeli practice to another country, say that the status genuinely differs. Route any pregnancy or breastfeeding question to the teratology service rather than repeating a contraindication yourself. Note also that not every Optalgin registration is OTC: OPTALGIN TEVA returns prescription: true.

Step 5: Drug Safety Information

Provide safety context (NOT medical advice):

The leaflet is the thing you hand over instead of an answer, so get the right one. GetSpecificDrug returns brochure[], but that array is dominated by החמרה לעלון entries, which are leaflet AMENDMENT notices, not the leaflet. For one product brochure[0] is an amendment from 2017 while the actual consumer leaflet is from 2026. Filter on type == "עלון לצרכן", pick the newest, and choose the language the user is reading in (lng is עברית / אנגלית / ערבית). The url is a bare filename, not a link: resolve it against https://mohpublic.health.gov.il/IsraelDrugs/<filename>.

Patient information leaflet (alon la-tzarchan):

  • Available in Hebrew for all registered drugs
  • Published on MoH website and inside drug packaging
  • Contains: Indications, contraindications, side effects, dosage

Drug interactions: do not answer, route.

Do not cross-reference active ingredients yourself. Deciding whether two medicines interact, and whether it matters for this patient, is a clinical judgement that depends on dose, indication, renal and hepatic function and everything else the person is taking. State the question back clearly, name the products and their active ingredients so the user can repeat them accurately, give them the consumer leaflets, and send them to a pharmacist, who can run a full interaction check against their actual medication list.

Pregnancy and breastfeeding: do not answer, route.

This skill deliberately does NOT carry the A/B/C/D/X letter table. The FDA's Pregnancy and Lactation Labeling Rule removed those categories: "The PLLR removes pregnancy letter categories -- A, B, C, D and X", with the labelling changes effective 30 June 2015 and phased in for older approvals (OTC labelling was never in scope). Reproducing a retired five-row lookup table next to a footnote saying it is legacy invites exactly the failure this skill exists to prevent: an agent answering "category C" to "can I take this while pregnant".

The Ministry of Health's own drug-registry service page routes this question to a named national service: לגבי נטילת תרופות בזמן היריון, יש לפנות למרכז הארצי לייעוץ טרטולוגי. Send the user to the Israeli Teratology Information Service and to their physician. Give them the leaflet from brochure[] if they want to read the labelling themselves.

Recall and safety alerts:

Step 6: Prescription Status

Israeli prescription categories:

Type Hebrew Meaning
GSL a preparation that may be sold outside a pharmacy Sellable outside a pharmacy. The registry exposes this as the isGSL filter on SearchByAdv
OTC without a prescription Available without prescription at a pharmacy. prescription: false on SearchByName
Prescription prescription Requires a physician's prescription. prescription: true
Restricted restricted prescription Specialist prescription or hospital-only
Dangerous drug dangerous drug Controlled under פקודת הסמים המסוכנים, special prescription form

The last row is סם מסוכן, the statutory term used in the Dangerous Drugs Ordinance. Earlier versions of this skill said sam mefakach, which is not the term the Ministry uses.

Note that the per-drug restriction does not arrive in any field called sug mircham. What the API actually returns is the boolean prescription on SearchByName and the prose limitations on GetSpecificDrug.

Examples

Example 1: Drug Lookup

User says: "Tell me about Acamol"

Call SearchByName with {"val":"acamol","prescription":false,"healthServices":false,"pageIndex":1,"orderBy":0}. Answer from what came back, naming the registration number.

Result: "Acamol", registration number 020 16 20534 00, is paracetamol 500 mg in tablet form, marketing authorisation held by TEVA ISRAEL LTD. That registration is not prescription-only and is flagged as in the health basket, at a regulated maximum consumer price of 14.12 NIS. Note that "Acamol" covers several registrations and they differ: ACAMOL TEVA CAPLETS and ACAMOL FOCUS are NOT flagged as in the basket. What you actually pay is your kupah's copay, not this price. For how much to take, read the leaflet or ask your pharmacist. This skill does not give doses.

Example 2: Generic Alternative

User says: "Is there a cheaper alternative to Lipitor?"

Look up Lipitor, take its activeComponentsCompareName (atorvastatin), search that, page through to the pages count, drop iscanceled products, and compare the customerPrice values you actually retrieved.

Result: an itemized list of the registered atorvastatin products at the same strength and dosage form, each with its registration number, its holder, its regulated price, and its own basket flag, plus the note that basket status differs between registrations so it must be read per product. No percentage saving is quoted. Switching brand to generic is a decision for the prescriber and the pharmacist.

Example 3: Health Basket Check

User says: "Is Keytruda covered by kupat cholim?"

This is the case where a yes/no answer is actively harmful. Call GetSpecificDrug with 154 38 34448 00 and read salList, frameworkOfInclusion and limitations.

Result: Keytruda (pembrolizumab, ATC L01FF02) is in the basket, but entitlement is defined per indication and the registry lists 101 of them, each with its own conditions, and frameworkOfInclusion adds line-of-therapy and duration limits (for example the adjuvant melanoma entry caps treatment at one year and allows only one checkpoint inhibitor during the illness). limitations records that it may be prescribed only by a specialist. So the honest answer is: it depends entirely on your specific diagnosis and treatment line, which only your oncologist can match against that list. If your indication is not on it, the route is the kupah's exceptions committee (ועדת חריגים לתרופות מחוץ לסל הבריאות) or a request to add the drug to the basket, and there is an appeal to the National Health Insurance public complaints commissioner. Note that supplementary insurance (shaban) and compassionate use are different things from each other and from the exceptions route, and a kupah is not obliged to supply an off-basket drug.

Bundled Resources

Scripts

  • scripts/lookup_drug.py - Queries the LIVE registry. Subcommands: search (by name), drug (by registration number, including the basket indication list), generics (by ingredient, paging to completion), prescription-types (the five statutory categories). It refuses to print doses, and it distinguishes the HTML error page and the 502 maintenance page from a real JSON answer. Earlier versions shipped a frozen table of brands with hardcoded dose, prescription and basket values; that table was removed because it was verifiably wrong (it claimed Glucophage was in the basket when all three registrations return health: false) and because basket and prescription status are per registration number and cannot be represented per brand. Run: python scripts/lookup_drug.py --help

References

  • references/drug-registry-guide.md - Registry field definitions split per endpoint, the endpoint list with payloads, the five Israeli prescription categories (GSL, OTC, prescription, restricted, סם מסוכן), the real banded copay structure with the quarterly ceilings, the per-indication basket mechanics, the off-basket routes, and generic-switching guidance. Consult when interpreting registry fields or explaining coverage to users.

Recommended MCP Servers

MCP Server What it adds Link
israel-drugs Semantic wrappers over the MoH registry (discover_drug_by_name, get_comprehensive_drug_info, explore_generic_alternatives, find_drugs_for_symptom and others). They are not one-to-one with the endpoints in Step 2 https://agentskills.co.il/he/mcp/israel-drugs

Pairing rule. That MCP advertises dosage and administration information among its features. This skill's refusal rules still apply when it is present: having a tool that will return a dose is not permission to state one. Use it to retrieve registry data, and route dosing, interaction and pregnancy questions to a pharmacist or physician exactly as Step 5 requires.

Gotchas

  • Israeli drug registration uses local brand names that differ from international names. The same active ingredient may have different trade names in Israel vs. the US or Europe. Agents may use international brand names that Israeli pharmacies will not recognize.
  • The Israeli drug formulary (sal habri'ut) determines which medications are subsidized. Agents may recommend a medication without checking if it is in the sal, leading to unexpected out-of-pocket costs.
  • Drug prices in Israel are regulated by the Ministry of Health. The maximum retail price (mechir mufchach) is fixed and different from US or European prices. Agents should not use international drug pricing.
  • Israeli prescriptions use the metric system exclusively. Agents may convert dosages from imperial measurements or use non-standard abbreviations.
  • A 200-response from this API can be a failure. A fabricated endpoint path returns HTTP 200 with an HTML error page, and a real endpoint under load returns HTTP 502 with a maintenance page. Only a body that parses as JSON is a real answer.
  • Basket and prescription status vary between registrations of the same brand name. Answering for "Losec" or "Acamol" rather than for a registration number will be wrong for some of them.
  • Ten results is a page, not an answer. Loop pageIndex to the pages count before claiming a list is complete.
  • health: true on an expensive drug is not a coverage answer. Read salList; entitlement is per indication.

Reference Links

Source URL What to Check
Israeli drug index (service page) https://www.gov.il/he/service/israeli-drug-index Primary gov.il entry point for the national drug registry
Drug registry search UI https://israeldrugs.health.gov.il/ Live search by trade name, active ingredient, or registration number
Ministry of Health - Pharma https://www.gov.il/he/departments/units/pharmaceuticals/govil-landing-page Pharmaceuticals Division landing page, registry entry points
Health basket drugs (Kol Zchut) https://www.kolzchut.org.il/he/תרופות_בסל_הבריאות That the list is closed and annual, that the binding instrument is the order, and that kupot copay rules differ
Chronic-patient payment ceiling (Kol Zchut) https://www.kolzchut.org.il/he/תקרת_תשלום_ברכישת_תרופות_לחולים_כרוניים Current quarterly ceilings per kupah, above which basket drugs are free
Off-basket routes (Kol Zchut) https://www.kolzchut.org.il/he/סל_הבריאות Exceptions committee, request to add a drug to the basket, and the appeal route
Adverse-event reporting (MoH) https://sideeffects.health.gov.il/ The Israeli side-effect reporting form. NOT the UK Yellow Card
Drug warnings and recalls (MoH) https://www.gov.il/he/departments/topics/drugs-recall/govil-landing-page Safety alerts, recalls, marketing-discontinuation notices
Drug registry API (IDRServer) https://israeldrugs.health.gov.il/GovServiceList/IDRServer/SearchByName The live JSON API. POST only. Real endpoints: SearchByName, GetSpecificDrug, SearchByBarcode, SearchGeneric, SearchByAdv, GetAtcList, GetMatanList, GetPackageList
ATC / WHO drug classification https://www.whocc.no/atc_ddd_index/ International ATC codes for cross-referencing active ingredients

Troubleshooting

Error: "Drug not found in registry"

Cause: Drug may be registered under different name, or not registered in Israel Solution: Try searching by active ingredient instead of brand name. Some international brands are marketed under different names in Israel. Check if the drug is registered at all -- not all drugs approved abroad are registered in Israel.

Error: "Health basket status unclear"

Cause: Almost always because health was read as a yes/no when the entitlement is per indication. Solution: Call GetSpecificDrug and read salList, frameworkOfInclusion and limitations. Report how many indications are listed and that the user's own diagnosis decides it. For an indication not on the list, the route is the kupah's exceptions committee, not supplementary insurance.

Error: "The API returned 200 but I cannot parse it"

Cause: Either the endpoint name or a parameter name is wrong, or the service is in maintenance. Solution: Check the name against the endpoint table in Step 2, and check the payload keys (SearchByName takes prescription and healthServices, not prefix). A fabricated path and a wrong parameter both return the same HTML error page under a 200. A 502 with a maintenance image is the service being down; retry later rather than changing your call.

Error: "Price information unavailable" or the price is 0

Cause: customerPrice of "0" means the product is not on the retail price list, typically because it is hospital-administered. It does not mean free. Solution: Query SearchByName for customerPrice / packagesPrices[] or GetSpecificDrug for maxPrice. If it is 0, say the drug is not sold at retail and that cost is handled through the kupah. Never present a regulated price as the amount the user will pay: that is the copay, which the registry does not hold.