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 diseas ...

to uniquely identify

medication A medication (also called medicament, medicine, pharmaceutical drug, medicinal drug or simply drug) is a drug used to diagnose, cure, treat, or prevent disease. Drug therapy (pharmacotherapy) is an important part of the medical field and re ...

. 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. T ...

, 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 respon ...

. *

Drug Identification Number Any product defined as a drug under the Canadian Food and Drugs Act must have an associated drug identification number (or DIN). A DIN also pertains to veterinary drugs permitted for sale in Canada. The drug identification number (DIN) is the 8 d ...

(DIN) — administered by

Health Canada Health Canada (HC; french: Santé Canada, SC)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 unit ...

under the

Food and Drugs Act The ''Food and Drugs Act'' (the ''Act'') (formal title ''An Act respecting food, drugs, cosmetics and therapeutic devices'') is an act of the Parliament of Canada regarding the production, import, export, transport across provinces and sale of f ...

* Hong Kong Drug Registration — administered by the Pharmaceutical Service of the

Department of Health (Hong Kong) Hong Kong's Department of Health is responsible for healthcare policies and the provision of basic healthcare services and established in 1939. The public hospitals are managed by the department's Hospital Authority. The department reports ...

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 South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernm ...

- 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 chemical ...

(AT, or ATC/DDD) — administered by

World Health Organization The World Health Organization (WHO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for international public health. The WHO Constitution states its main objective as "the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of h ...

Generic Product Identifier The Generic Product Identifier (GPI) is a 14-character hierarchical classification system created by Wolters Kluwer's Medi-Span that identifies drugs from their primary therapeutic use down to the unique interchangeable product regardless of manuf ...

(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 pro ...

number published by MediSpan *

SNOMED The Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine (SNOMED) is a systematic, computer-processable collection of medical terms, in human and veterinary medicine, to provide codes, terms, synonyms and definitions which cover anatomy, diseases, findings, pr ...

— C axis Ingredients: *

Unique Ingredient Identifier The Unique Ingredient Identifier (UNII) is an alphanumeric identifier linked to a substance's molecular structure or descriptive information and is generated by the Global Substance Registration System (GSRS) of the Food and Drug Administration ...

Proprietary database identifiers include those assigned by

First Databank First Databank (FDB) is a major provider of drug and medical device databases that help inform healthcare professionals to make decisions. FDB partners with information system developers to deliver useful medication- and medical device-related info ...

Micromedex Merative, formerly IBM Watson Health, is a standalone company as of 2022. Merative offers products and services that help clients facilitate medical research, clinical research, Real world evidence, and healthcare services, through the use of art ...

, 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'', the ScienceDirect collection of electronic journals, '' Trends'', th ...

), and

Cerner Multum Cerner Corporation is an American supplier of health information technology (HIT) services, devices, and hardware. As of February 2018, its products were in use at more than 27,000 facilities around the world. The company had more than 29,000 emp ...

MediSource Lexicon; these are cross-indexed by

RxNorm RxNorm is US-specific terminology in medicine that contains all medications available on the US market. It can also be used in personal health records applications. RxNorm is part of Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) terminology and is maint ...

, which also assigns a unique identifier (RxCUI) to every combination of active ingredient and dose level.RxNorm Overview
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References

Pharmacological classification systems {{Pharma-stub

Examples

See also

References