Swissmedic publishes its Annual Report and financial statements for 2024

On 6 June 2025 the Federal Council approved the reporting of Swissmedic, the Swiss Agency for Therapeutic Products, for the previous year, thereby discharging the Swissmedic Agency Council of its responsibilities for 2024. The key performance indicators showed a positive trend. The Swiss Agency for Therapeutic Products promoted access to innovative treatments through fast-track procedures, international cooperation and its Innovation Office, which has now been definitively established, so that patients in Switzerland are able to benefit sooner from promising treatments. Swissmedic has specifically invested in the upgrading of its IT infrastructure: in 2024, the Swissmedic Public Cloud and the online databases SwissGMDP and swissdamed were launched. The Agency posted a deficit of around 23 million Swiss francs for the 2024 financial year. This is partly due to the digital transformation process and is covered by the reserves created in recent years.

The key performance figures continued their positive trend in the second year of the 2023–2026 strategy period. In 2024, 46 human medicinal products with new active substances were authorised – 12 % more than the previous year – as were 21 new veterinary medicinal products, including two vaccines. In total, the Agency processed over 12,000 authorisation applications and applications for variations, approved 198 new clinical trials, dealt with more than 6,000 cases of illegally imported medicines and conducted numerous inspections. Headcount rose slightly to 520 full-time equivalents. An important step was the creation of the new "Medical Devices Surveillance" Sector, Swissmedic thereby underscoring the growing importance of this market and strengthening its regulatory oversight.

In 2024, Swissmedic commissioned its own Cloud infrastructure and expanded and successfully launched several central professional applications: in August the Swiss Database on Medical Devices, swissdamed, for the online registration of economic operators; in September the public database SwissGMDP for querying GMP and GDP certificates; and in November the first release of the new Swissmedic portal, designed to facilitate the data-based processing of applications and licences in future. The technical basis was also created for a central data analysis platform, enabling Swissmedic to prepare and analyse information from various specialist systems in a standardised manner and make it available for internal audits.

As already mentioned, in 2024 Swissmedic recorded an investment-related deficit that was completely covered by the reserves of 114.5 million Swiss francs set aside in recent years. With a deficit of 23.4 million Swiss francs, the result was some 13 million francs above the originally budgeted figure. The discrepancy is attributable to the reduced income of around CHF 6 million and additional expenditure of around CHF 7 million. The main causes were lower earnings from fees and supervisory levies for medicinal products and advance investments in IT.

Social, technological and health policy developments are constantly changing the regulatory environment. Swissmedic will continue to digitise its processes and develop the technical expertise of its employees in the years ahead in order to meet these challenges. At the same time, it is important to reflect the growing momentum in the development of innovative treatments in a timely and responsible manner in the regulatory context and to promote closer international cooperation.

The Annual Report and financial statements for 2024 are available on the Swissmedic website.