What ARTG listing actually means

General information about the equipment, not medical advice. The directions that came with your medicine and the person who prescribed it come first, every time.

What the register is

The Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods is maintained by the Therapeutic Goods Administration. Therapeutic goods supplied in Australia generally have to be included on it, and the entry is held by a sponsor, which is the Australian entity responsible for the product.

The register is public. If a product claims an ARTG number you can look it up and see what was actually approved, which is more useful than the claim itself.

Listed, registered, and included

Registered goods have been individually evaluated by the TGA for quality, safety and, where it applies, effectiveness. This is the higher scrutiny pathway and it is where higher risk products sit.

Listed goods go through a lower risk pathway. The sponsor certifies that the product meets the applicable requirements and uses only permitted ingredients and permitted claims. The TGA audits rather than evaluating every one before supply.

Medical devices are classified by risk, from Class I up, and the requirements scale with the class. A syringe and an implant are not treated the same way and should not be.

Why some things are on neither

Not everything in a treatment room is a therapeutic good. Paper towel, couch roll and facial tissues are not, and looking for an ARTG number on a box of tissues will not find one.

That is why we show approval status per product, from a real value for that specific product, rather than printing a blanket claim across a catalogue. A site that puts the same regulatory line on cotton wool and on a syringe is telling you nothing about either.

Where a product in our range has an entry, the number belongs on its page. Where it does not, nothing should appear, and nothing does.