Pharmaceutical code
Pharmaceutical codes are used in medical classification to uniquely identify medication. They may uniquely identify an active ingredient, drug system in general, or a specific pharmaceutical product from a specific manufacturer.
Examples
Drug system identifiers :- National Drug Code — administered by Food and Drug Administration.
- Drug Identification Number — administered by Health Canada under the Food and Drugs Act
- Hong Kong Drug Registration — administered by the Pharmaceutical Service of the Department of Health
- National Pharmaceutical Product Index - South Africa
- Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical Classification System — administered by World Health Organization
- Generic Product Identifier — hierarchical classification number published by MediSpan
- SNOMED — C axis
Proprietary database identifiers include those assigned by First Databank, Micromedex, MediSpan, Gold Standard Drug Database, and Cerner Multum MediSource Lexicon; these are cross-indexed by RxNorm, which also assigns a unique identifier to every combination of active ingredient and dose level.