RxNorm, a standardized nomenclature for clinical drugs, is produced by the National Library of Medicine. In this context, a clinical drug is a pharmaceutical product given to (or taken by) a patient with a therapeutic or diagnostic intent. In RxNorm, the name of a clinical drug combines its ingredients, strengths, and form.
In RxNorm, the form is the physical form in which the drug is administered or is specified to be administered in a prescription or order. The RxNorm clinical drug name does not indicate the form in which the product was manufactured, or its form when it arrived at the dispensary. With few exceptions (for packs), the RxNorm clinical drug name does not indicate the size of a package of drug units.
RxNorm's standard names for clinical drugs are connected to the varying names of drugs present in many different controlled vocabularies within the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) Metathesaurus, including those in commercially available drug information sources. These connections are intended to facilitate interoperability among the computerized systems that record or process data dealing with clinical drugs.
Like other vocabularies in the Metathesaurus, RxNorm is organized by concept or meaning. All concepts in RxNorm are assigned at least one semantic type from the Semantic Network (Chapter 5 of the UMLS Reference Manual). This provides consistent categorization of all concepts in RxNorm at the relatively general level represented in the Semantic Network.
Unified Medical Language System® (UMLS®)
https://www.nlm.nih.gov/research/umls/rxnorm/docs/rxnormfiles.html
RxNorm, a standardized nomenclature for clinical drugs, is produced by the National Library of Medicine. In this context, a clinical drug is a pharmaceutical product given to (or taken by) a patient with a therapeutic or diagnostic intent. In RxNorm, the name of a clinical drug combines its ingredients, strengths, and form.
In RxNorm, the form is the physical form in which the drug is administered or is specified to be administered in a prescription or order. The RxNorm clinical drug name does not indicate the form in which the product was manufactured, or its form when it arrived at the dispensary. With few exceptions (for packs), the RxNorm clinical drug name does not indicate the size of a package of drug units.
RxNorm's standard names for clinical drugs are connected to the varying names of drugs present in many different controlled vocabularies within the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) Metathesaurus, including those in commercially available drug information sources. These connections are intended to facilitate interoperability among the computerized systems that record or process data dealing with clinical drugs.
Like other vocabularies in the Metathesaurus, RxNorm is organized by concept or meaning. All concepts in RxNorm are assigned at least one semantic type from the Semantic Network (Chapter 5 of the UMLS Reference Manual). This provides consistent categorization of all concepts in RxNorm at the relatively general level represented in the Semantic Network.