Kalpana Kalpana (Editor)

Pharmaceutical code

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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.

Examples

Drug system identifiers (manufacturer-specific including inactive ingredients):

  • National Drug Code (NDC) — administered by Food and Drug Administration [1]
  • 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

    • Heirarchical systems:

  • Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical Classification System (AT, or ATC/DDD) — administered by World Health Organization
  • Generic Product Identifier (GPI) — heirarchical classification number published by MediSpan
  • SNOMED — C axis

    • Ingredients:

  • Unique Ingredient Identifier

    • 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.

    References

    Pharmaceutical code Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA