Pharmaceutical codes are used in
medical classification to uniquely identify
medication. They may uniquely identify an
active ingredient, drug system (including
inactive ingredient
An excipient is a substance formulated alongside the active ingredient of a medication, included for the purpose of long-term stabilization, bulking up solid formulations that contain potent active ingredients in small amounts (thus often referred ...
s 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.
*
Drug Identification Number (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
*
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:
*
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.
RxNorm Overview
/ref>
See also
* Drug nomenclature
* Drug class
References
Pharmacological classification systems
{{Pharma-stub