Pharmaceutical codes are used in
medical classification
A medical classification is used to transform descriptions of medical diagnoses or procedures into standardized statistical code in a process known as clinical coding. Diagnosis classifications list diagnosis codes, which are used to track dise ...
to uniquely identify
medication
Medication (also called medicament, medicine, pharmaceutical drug, medicinal product, medicinal drug or simply drug) is a drug used to medical diagnosis, diagnose, cure, treat, or preventive medicine, prevent disease. Drug therapy (pharmaco ...
. They may uniquely identify an
active ingredient
An active ingredient is any ingredient that provides biologically active or other direct effect in the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease or to affect the structure or any function of the body of humans or animals.
...
, drug system (including
inactive ingredients and time-release agents) in general, or a specific pharmaceutical product from a specific manufacturer.
Examples
Drug system identifiers (manufacturer-specific including inactive ingredients):
*
National Drug Code (NDC) — administered by
Food and Drug Administration
The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA or US FDA) is a List of United States federal agencies, federal agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Health and Human Services. The FDA is respo ...
.
*
Drug Identification Number (DIN) — administered by
Health Canada
Health Canada (HC; )Health Canada is the applied title under the Federal Identity Program; the legal title is Department of Health (). is the Structure of the Canadian federal government#Departments, with subsidiary units, department of the Gove ...
under the
Food and Drugs Act
The ''Food and Drugs Act'' () is an act of the Parliament of Canada regarding the production, import, export, transport across provinces and sale of food, drugs, contraceptive devices and cosmetics (including personal cleaning products such as ...
*
Hong Kong Drug Registration — administered by the Pharmaceutical Service of the
Department of Health (Hong Kong)
*
National Pharmaceutical Product Index
The National Pharmaceutical Product Index or NAPPI is a comprehensive database of pharmaceutical codes for medical products classification used in South Africa. Each product has a unique NAPPI code which enables electronic data interchange
Elec ...
- South Africa
Hierarchical systems:
*
Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical Classification System
The Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical (ATC) Classification System is a drug classification system that classifies the active ingredients of drugs according to the organ or system on which they act and their therapeutic, pharmacological and chemi ...
(AT, or ATC/DDD) — administered by
World Health Organization
The World Health Organization (WHO) is a list of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations which coordinates responses to international public health issues and emergencies. It is headquartered in Gen ...
*
Generic Product Identifier (GPI) —
hierarchical classification
Hierarchical classification is a system of grouping things according to a hierarchy.
In the field of machine learning, hierarchical classification is sometimes referred to as instance space decomposition, which splits a complete multi-class clas ...
number published by MediSpan
*
SNOMED — C axis
Ingredients:
*
Unique Ingredient Identifier
Proprietary database identifiers include those assigned by
First Databank,
Micromedex
Merative L.P., formerly IBM Watson Health, is an American medical technology company that provides products and services that help clients facilitate medical research, clinical research, real world evidence, and healthcare services, through the ...
,
MediSpan, Gold Standard Drug Database (published by
Elsevier
Elsevier ( ) is a Dutch academic publishing company specializing in scientific, technical, and medical content. Its products include journals such as ''The Lancet'', ''Cell (journal), Cell'', the ScienceDirect collection of electronic journals, ...
), and
Cerner Multum MediSource Lexicon; these are cross-indexed by
RxNorm, which also assigns a unique identifier (RxCUI) to every combination of active ingredient and dose level.
RxNorm Overview
/ref>
See also
* Drug nomenclature
Drug nomenclature is the systematic naming of drugs, especially pharmaceutical drugs. In the majority of circumstances, drugs have 3 types of names: chemical names, the most important of which is the IUPAC name; generic or nonproprietary names, ...
* Drug class
A drug is any chemical substance other than a nutrient or an essential dietary ingredient, which, when administered to a living organism, produces a biological effect. Consumption of drugs can be via inhalation, injection, smoking, ingestio ...
References
Pharmacological classification systems
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