RxNorm Completes the Prescribable Name Project

The National Library of Medicine (NLM) is delighted to announce that the April 2017 RxNorm monthly release contains a Prescribable Name (PSN) for all RxNorm normal forms for active human drugs sold in the United States (US) with a few exceptions. Drugs without a PSN include allergenic extracts and certain forms containing three or more ingredients. PSNs are user-friendly synonyms of RxNorm normalized drug names and are meant to be used as display names in e-prescribing systems. Unlike other RxNorm synonyms, there can only be a single PSN associated with an RxNorm concept (i.e., RxNorm Concept Unique Identifier or RXCUI). RxNorm editors create PSNs based upon the drug label on DailyMed (https://dailymed.nlm.nih.gov/). PSNs may contain common ingredient abbreviations and tall man lettering, and their strengths may not be normalized as they are in the RxNorm normalized names.

PSNs were first introduced in the July 2014 release of RxNorm. NLM would like to thank the US Department of Veterans Affairs, Veterans Health Administration (VHA) for help with funding this project, and the National Council for Prescription Drug Programs (NCPDP) for help with organizing content discussions with stakeholders. The addition of PSNs to RxNorm is a major step towards improving the efficiency and accuracy of drug information management in e-prescribing systems.

Since its founding in 1836, the National Library of Medicine https://www.nlm.nih.gov has played a pivotal role in translating biomedical research into practice and is a leader in information innovation. NLM is the world's largest medical library, and millions of scientists, health professionals and the public around the world use NLM services every day.