[Gnumed-devel] Drug Databases and drug identification - RxNorm?

[Jim Busser]

Just stumbled across RxNorm, which is an initiative of the US National Library 
of Medicine. What I was able to figure out so far (links below) was that they:

1) seem to desire, in the longer term, to become a drugref - like resource, 
including the capacity to  run as a server responding to queries

2) seem to have made a provision (like drugref) to be able to contain and 
internally manage both free and proprietary resources. This is already apparent 
if you would attempt to download, because you cannot do so without first 
obtaining a UMLS License and credential, which they seem to require on the 
basis of SNOMED-CT and First Data Bank (which supplies drug interactions) as 
some kind of maybe-partners.

Needless to say, it is this mentality of "let us put the free stuff behind a 
barrier, on account of the non-free parts" that disappoints. They *could* 
instead make the free parts available without obstruction, and just require 
accounts for non-free parts.

As we don't know its true value nor its prospects for success-and-survival, I 
am not necessarily suggesting we *do* anything with it but I would be open to 
us looking further if anyone would come along with more reason to pay it more 
attention.

In the meantime, I will link this post from our wiki topic DrugDatabases.

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Article: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/research/umls/rxnorm/RxNorm.pdf

... finishes with: "We hope the RxNorm system will become a hub for 
medical—specifically pharmaceutical—vocabularies." While a specification is 
available (and files potentially available) through

included as at January 2010:

        
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/research/umls/rxnorm/docs/2010/rxnorm_releasenotes_full_02012010.html

documentation: 
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/research/umls/rxnorm/docs/2009/rxnorm_doco_full05042009.html

... people must first obtain a UMLS License and credential to be able to log in 
(even for the subset of content that is non-proprietary e.g. leaving out 
SNOMED-CT and First Data Bank).