What is electronic trade?
Electronic trade is a term that covers all forms of commercial transactions and business via the web. It includes advertising and marketing, publishing catalogues of products and services, formation of contract, payment transfers, and in some cases the service itself may also be supplied via the Internet.

In the health sector, e-trade includes information services such as the distribution of periodicals, advertisements for medication and treatment, ordering medication and health services. It may also include at least a part of the health service itself, such as making a diagnosis in the course of a web-based consultation.
Normally e-trade also includes paying for a service or product, but this will not be discussed on this page dealing with health-related services and products. Tips about payment have therefore been collected in a separate article.

The internet is international and if you order products from abroad, they must be cleared through Norwegian customs before you receive them. If you wonder whether a product can be imported to Norway, or whether any licence or permit is required for importing the product, you should contact your local customs authority before placing your order. You will find a list of customs offices at Tollvesenet .

E-trade in the health sector
In Norway we have numerous acts and statutory instruments that regulate the health sector. Under national legislation a number of health personnel categories are required to have public authorisation or a licence. Marketing and selling medication is strictly regulated. Selling and buying health services and products on the Norwegian market is subjected to these regulations. If a business firm abroad offers this type of services on the Norwegian market, the same rules will apply, but it may be difficult to control such activity. One example is marketing medication by e-mail.

Foreign enterprises may offer health services through the web. It is difficult for the Norwegian authorities to control such services. We therefore recommend caution if you wish to buy other services than those offered by enterprises in Norway with official approval. To run a surgery or to sell medication require authorisation in Norway, regardless of whether this activity is carried out in a traditional surgery or as an electronic service.

When you are buying health products and services, a lot of sensitive personal data may pass from the user to the service provider and vice versa. The Norwegian authorities require that such information is processed in a reliable manner. Be careful with the information you save on your own computer. This applies in particular if you share a computer with someone else. Computers with consumer versions of Microsoft Windows, for example, will not initially allow you to protect saved information from other users of the same computer accessing it. We suggest you read the article on data security carefully.

When you have been surfing the internet you should remember that most browsers often store information about all the pages you have visited. If others use your computer and you don't want them to see the pages you have opened, you must remember to erase this information after using the computer. You can do this by erasing temporary files from your browser. All browsers have menus making this possible.
When buying health products from abroad, you must bear in mind that you are sending information out of the country. If this is sensitive personal data, you ought to study the rules that apply to protection of privacy in the country the seller operates in. In the EU and in the EEA, which Norway is a part of, these rules have been harmonised, which means they are more or less the same. Other countries may have quite different legislation.

Health products
The buyer should ascertain whether the products he or she is buying can be defined as medicine. Selling and importing medicine is regulated by legemiddelloven [the act relating to medicines], and in Norway selling medicines to the general public can, as a main rule, only be done by pharmacies and dispensaries placed under a pharmacy. Under current regulations, e-trade can only play a minor role. This applies in particular to delivering medicines that have been ordered. However, shopping on the internet may simplify purchasing medicine even today, as prescriptions may be sent electronically from a doctor to a pharmacy, and the user may place his order electronically. Nevertheless, the fact remains that Norwegian pharmacies are at present (the autumn of 2001) still in the initial stage with regard to electronic trade.

Besides selling medicine, the electronic pharmacy of the future might also offer services such as notifying long-term users that it is time to order a new batch, or that a prescription must be renewed.

Importing medication for personal use
By personal use of a medicine we mean medicines taken by an individual. Under the EEA Treaty you may, to some extent, import medicine for personal use from another EEA country. At the time of writing, the regulations in force are those laid down in circular IK-2460 from the Norwegian Board of Health. It is important to remember that a person who imports medicine must be able to document to the customs authorities that it has been bought legally, i.e. in conformity with the regulations in force in the country where it was bought. It is not possible to import narcotics or performance-enhancing drugs.

This means that it is possible to buy and import medicine legally from other countries. In such cases you should make sure that you meet the formal documentation requirements, and that the medicine belongs to the group of products that can be imported. It is advisable to consult the customs authorities [Tollvesenet] about such imports. In some cases they will refer you to the Norwegian Medicines Agency [Legemiddelkontrollen] which is the supervisory body with respect to producing, testing and selling medicines.

For Norwegian citizens resident in another EEA country, it may be useful to know that similar regulations for importing medicine for personal use also apply in these countries. To these users, e-trade in health services and products will provide an opportunity to consider the use of medicines and other health products they are already familiar with. It also gives them an opportunity to ask questions and describe problems in Norwegian while living in another country. It must be emphasised that it is necessary to read the customs regulations of the country you are living in before importing medicines from Norway.

Information services
Information services usually mean journals or the like. This may be included in the concept of e-trade if you have to pay for the service, which is quite often an electronic version of the type of health-related publications distributed on paper.
Marketing medicines is strictly regulated. Consumers should be aware that some information services are aimed at health personnel and may contain marketing that is illegal on the ordinary market. Norwegian web sites with such information will in some cases be protected by a password, but some only have a warning and no other access control.

Many Norwegian users find that they receive advertisements for health services and health products from abroad in the form of e-mails. It is difficult to stop such ads, although they are illegal in most cases. Note also that some of the firms that send this type of ads falsify the sender’s e-mail address so that it looks as if the mail is coming from a Norwegian sender.