Compounded medication (also known as extemporaneous preparations) have been prepared by pharmacists for hundreds of years. In the early days of pharmacy – before mass produced drugs were readily available – all pharmacies were compounding pharmacies who prepared medication in-house to treat various ailments.

 As commercially manufactured drugs became readily available the need for pharmacists to produce their own preparations reduced significantly.  However, the compounding of medication by registered pharmacists is still the only way that some medications remain available to patients and continues as an integral part of the pharmacy regulations in Australia.

Compounded medication is usually supplied to individual named patients upon the request of a doctor by supplying the pharmacy with a prescription. It is prepared by a trained pharmacist generally to an established formula. Compounded medication could be drugs that are perhaps available as a commercial product but not available at the dosage required or in the correct form (e.g. may only be available as a tablet where the patient is only able to take liquids). Alternatively, it could be a medication that does not have enough demand to justify cost of mass production.