Short overview at I91Informatics group in Oct 2012

1. Everything you wanted to know,
about RxNorm
John Poikonen, PharmD
John@ePharmD.NET

2. Agenda
• The imperative of RxNorm
• Drug KB Industrial Complex
• RxNorm Under the covers
– Source
– Advantages
– Disadvantages
• Pearls
• Questions
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3. Terminology Standards
• Medicine
– ICD, CPT, DSM
• Nursing
– NIC and NOC
• Pharmacy
– NDCs (yuk)
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4. National Drug Codes
• They Suck.
• Wrong specificity for most clinical uses
• Non Standard
• Reused
• Variable format
• Impossible to normalize
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5. Meaningful Use
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6. HIE
• Medication Normalization an imperative.
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7. Drug Monitoring and HIE
• Congressional Report on Interoperability
• MA Law
• ONC Webinar Tomorrow
– Enhancing Access to Prescription Drug Monitoring
Programs through Health Information Technology:
Work Group Recommendations
» https://www4.gotomeeting.com/register/994354015
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8. What is RxNorm
• RxNorm is a set of drug concepts created and managed by
the National Library of Medicine (NLM) and available
through the UMLS’s (Unified Medical Language System)
Metathesaurus
• RxNorm initially created as a means to map generic
concepts between the drug compendia
• RxNorm has since expanded to incorporate brand name
concepts and different levels of drug concepts
• Commonly referred to as “one thing” but is actually an
umbrella term for multiple drug concepts
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11. RxNorm the best Drug KB
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12. Drug KB Industrial Complex
• Drug KB Industry
– Software Development needs
– Past anticompetitive and antitrust activities
– Should move to better CDS not terminology
• Vendors Perspective
– Spaghetti software development
– Codes tied to software
– Message to Vendors Deal with it!
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13. Pearls and Resources
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0N31_YgF
Ey8&feature=player_detailpage
• http://geekdoctor.blogspot.com/2011/11/ben
efits-of-rxnorm.html#
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14. Summary
• RxNorm will be the standard for all medication
interoperability
• RxNorm will be the standard for all medication allergy
listing
• RxNorm supports granularity for most clinical uses of
medication terminology, including eRx and Med Rec.
• Must insist that vendors convert to RxNorm for
interoperability NOW!
• RxNorm is the best Drug KB available and is free
• Do not hesitate to contact me on specifics
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