Pharmaceutical code
Drug identifier
Pharmaceutical codes are used in medical classification to uniquely identify medication. They may uniquely identify an active ingredient, drug system (including inactive ingredients and time-release agents) in general, or a specific pharmaceutical product from a specific manufacturer.
01Examples
Drug system identifiers (manufacturer-specific including inactive ingredients):
- National Drug Code (NDC), administered by Food and Drug Administration.
- Drug Identification Number (DIN), administered by Health Canada under the Food and Drugs Act
- Hong Kong Drug Registration, administered by the Pharmaceutical Service of the Department of Health (Hong Kong)
- National Pharmaceutical Product Index - South Africa
Hierarchical systems:
- Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical Classification System (AT, or ATC/DDD), administered by World Health Organization
- Generic Product Identifier (GPI), hierarchical classification number published by MediSpan
- SNOMED, C axis
Ingredients:
Proprietary database identifiers include those assigned by First Databank, Micromedex, MediSpan, Gold Standard Drug Database (published by Elsevier), 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.
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Pharmaceutical code”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
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