With the always-increasing prevalence and incidence of chronic diseases, polypharmacy becomes a necessity for many individuals. There is a genuine interest to studying polypharmacy because it is associated with both favourable and dreadful consequences. Nonetheless, there is still no formal universal definition for polypharmacy. There is a need to determine what medications to include in the definition. Administrative databases are valuable sources of information for performing populational surveillance of polypharmacy, but they encounter some limits, such as the fact that over the counter drugs are not accounted for. There are still many uncertainties regarding the creation of a polypharmacy indicator for public health. However, it is imperative to build such an indicator to evaluate the benefits and harms of polypharmacy.