RxNorm — Standardized Drug Nomenclature

What Is RxNorm?

RxNorm is a standardized naming system for clinical drugs maintained by the NLM (US National Library of Medicine). Its primary function is to normalize drug names across different vendors and systems, linking brand names, generic names, ingredients, strengths, and dose forms.

In the healthcare ecosystem, every manufacturer, distributor, and information system may refer to the same medication by different names. RxNorm resolves this ambiguity by providing unique identifiers (RxCUI) that connect all representations of the same drug, including brands, generics, and combinations.

This standardization is essential for electronic prescription and CPOE systems, where automatic verification of drug interactions, duplications, and allergies is required. Without normalized nomenclature, these safety checks would be inaccurate or impossible.

Why It Matters in Healthcare

• Patient safety: enables automatic verification of drug interactions, duplications, and allergies by normalizing drug names.
• Pharmacological interoperability: facilitates medication information exchange between electronic health record systems, pharmacies, and labs.
• Electronic prescription: serves as the foundation for e-prescription systems to correctly identify prescribed medications.
• Ambiguity elimination: connects brand names, generics, and ingredients of the same drug under a unique identifier.
• CPOE support: CPOE systems depend on normalized nomenclatures for their alerting and clinical decision functions.

How Davix Relates to RxNorm

• The pharmacy module of the Davix HIS supports drug catalogs that can map to standard nomenclatures for interaction checking.
• It enhances prescription safety by integrating interaction and duplication alerts based on normalized catalogs.
• It enables pharmacological interoperability with external systems through standardized drug identifiers.
• It integrates with the electronic prescription module for safe medication cycle management.

Learn how Davix HIS improves pharmacological safety at your institution.