Can we use RXNORM api for retrieval of drug contents for mobile apps

[prashant waghulde]

Hi All, 

    I am currently working towards build a mobile app in Android/iOS to retrieve the drug information based on the bar code scanning method. 

If some one has worked on such project before, perhaps they could provide me some pointers towards the design. 

I had 2 major doubts 

1. Is there any specific format to which the UPC codes should be converted to use RXNORM API for performing retrieval of drug information.

2. Can we use RXNORM api for performing the lookups to identify any drug-drug interactions. If yes, are there any tutorials available for mobile platforms 

  if not , could you recommend me any alternative. 

Thanks a lot for your time.

Regards,

Prashant Waghulde

 

[Pascal Pfiffner]

Hi Prashant

It is possible to use barcode scanning to arrive at RxNorm codes, however there is manual work involved. First, scanning the code is easy (I have forked the ZBar framework to update it for iOS 7 and 64 bit a while back, not sure if the official branch has catched up: https://github.com/p2/ZBar). This will give you an NDC (National Drug Code) number, which you will want to convert into an RXCUI. This was not possible via RxNav the last time I checked, but the codes are available in the RxNorm download. We have a Python 3 library that builds an NDC lookup table with normalized NDC numbers that you may want to use here: https://github.com/chb/py-umls#ndc-normalizer

So these steps allow you to scan a barcode and arrive at an RXCUI. As for looking up drug-drug interactions you'll have to hope for somebody else to provide some information, I have never done this.

Cheers

Pascal

[Sam Habiel]

Thanks Pascal... that's terrific.

Sam

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[mr.than...@gmail.com]

Pascal,

How can scanning barcode gives an NDC number?
are you saying the UPC is same as NDC for drugs?

[Pascal Pfiffner]

Yes, in the US the UPC barcodes are NDC numbers.

Best

Pascal

[exim]

Prashant,
 
For information about the Drug Interactions API, pls visit http://usgovxml.com/DataService.aspx?ds=DRUGAPI .  Not only will you find information about the Drug Interactions API, there is information about other APIs, datasources and source code that you may find useful.  There are even some free mobile web apps that use the Drug Interactions API for you to take a look at.
 
 
Robert Loftin
USGovXML.com

[mr.than...@gmail.com]

thanks for your response.
I thought that was the case but some UPC are not showing in Search.
Is there a pattern to convert UPC -> NDC ? like drop 1st and last 0?

Your python script does this with any UPC?

[Pascal Pfiffner]

You might have to normalize the NDC codes first: https://github.com/chb/py-umls#ndc-normalizer

The py-umls repo can do that, yes: https://github.com/chb/py-umls/blob/master/rxnorm.py#L48

This might solve your issue, but I'm not entirely sure. Good luck!

[Sam Habiel]

There is no reliable way to convert barcodes to NDCs. You may guess,
and guesses for barcodes starting with 00 will always be successful,
but they won't work with NDCs that start with other numbers.

--Sam

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