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RxNorm Provides Standard Names for Clinical DrugsIn 2001, the National Library of Medicine (NLM) began a project to improve the interoperability of drug terminology and drug synonyms for use in the electronic exchange of clinical health information. This NLM project resulted in the creation of the RxNorm database.  RxNorm RxNormprovides standard names for clinical drugs (active ingredient; strength; dose form) and for the dose forms as administered to a patient. It provides links from clinical drugs, both branded and generic, to their active ingredients, drug components (active ingredient; strength), and related brand names. National Drug Codes (NDCs) for specific drug products (where there are often many NDC codes for a single product) are linked to that product in RxNorm. RxNorm links its standard names to many of the drug vocabularies commonly used in pharmacy management and drug interaction software, including those of First Databank, MICROMEDEX, MediSpan, and Multum. By providing links between these vocabularies, RxNorm can mediate messages between systems not using the same software and vocabulary. To search the RxNorm database, the RxNav browser is required. This Java-based application allows users to query the RxNorm database by any of its components (ingredient, clinical drug, brand name, etc.) and displays all the information related to a given component on a single page. RxNav can be freely downloaded from http://mor.nlm.nih.gov/download/rxnav/. Information in this article is from: www.nlm.nih.gov/research/umls/rxnorm_main.html and http://mor.nlm.nih.gov/download/rxnav/. |
