RxNav Drug Normalization, Relations, NDC & Class Scraper

Turn messy drug names into clean, connected drug data. This actor uses the free RxNav REST API from the U.S. National Library of Medicine to normalize drug names to RxCUIs, walk the RxNorm relationship graph (brands ↔ generics ↔ ingredients ↔ dose forms), pull NDC product codes, and attach drug classes (ATC, Mechanism of Action, Established Pharmacologic Class, therapeutic and disease classes).

No API key. No login. ~$0.5 per 1,000 records.

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What this scrapes (4 modes)

Mode	Input	Output
drugs	a drug name	every RxNorm concept, grouped by term type (TTY): ingredients, brand names, clinical & branded drugs, packs, dose forms
related	an RxCUI (or name)	related concepts by TTY — the brand ↔ generic ↔ ingredient graph
ndcs	an RxCUI (or name)	the National Drug Codes (NDC) for that product
classes	an RxCUI (or name)	drug classes: ATC1‑4, MoA, EPC, PE, PK, therapeutic (VA), and disease relations (may_treat / may_prevent / ci_with)

In related, ndcs and classes modes you can pass RxCUIs directly or pass drug names — names are normalized to an RxCUI first.

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How this differs from rxnorm-scraper and dailymed-scraper

This actor is complementary, not a duplicate:

• rxnorm-scraper dumps the flat RxNorm concept/terminology data (names, codes, term types). It is a dictionary.
• This RxNav actor is about navigation and relationships that a flat RxNorm dump lacks: it resolves a name → RxCUI, walks the related-concept graph (brand↔generic↔ingredient), maps NDC product codes, and — most importantly — attaches RxClass drug classifications (ATC, MoA, EPC, therapeutic, disease). Those classes come from RxClass/MED‑RT/DailyMed, not from the core RxNorm terminology.
• dailymed-scraper scrapes FDA structured product labels (indications, warnings, dosage text). This actor gives you the coded relationships and classes to link those labels together.

Note on interactions: the RxNav drug‑drug interaction API was retired by the NLM and now returns HTTP 404. This actor therefore does not ship an interactions mode. For interaction data, use a maintained clinical source.

Related actors: rxnorm-scraper · dailymed-scraper · nlm-clinical-tables-scraper · openfda-scraper

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Example output

drugs mode (aspirin):

{
  "type": "drug_concept",
  "query": "aspirin",
  "rxcui": "1191",
  "name": "aspirin",
  "tty": "IN",
  "tty_label": "Ingredient",
  "synonym": null,
  "umls_cui": "C0004057",
  "is_suppressed": false,
  "source": "rxnav",
  "scraped_at": "2026-08-11T00:00:00Z"
}

classes mode (RxCUI 1191):

{
  "type": "drug_class",
  "rxcui": "1191",
  "class_id": "N02BA",
  "class_name": "Salicylic acid and derivatives",
  "class_type": "ATC1-4",
  "relation": null,
  "relation_source": "ATC",
  "source": "rxnav",
  "scraped_at": "2026-08-11T00:00:00Z"
}

ndcs mode → { "type": "ndc", "rxcui": "198440", "ndc": "00031930101", ... } related mode → { "type": "related", "source_rxcui": "1191", "related_rxcui": "215568", "related_name": "Bayer", "related_tty": "BN", "related_tty_label": "Brand Name", ... }

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Input

Field	Type	Default	Notes
mode	select	drugs	drugs / related / ndcs / classes
drugNames	array	["aspirin","metformin","atorvastatin"]	names; resolved to RxCUI in non‑drugs modes
rxcuis	array	[]	RxCUIs to process directly
relatedTtys	array	["IN","BN","SCD","SBD"]	related mode only
maxItems	integer	300	cap, max 5000

Use cases

• Medication apps — autocomplete a typed drug name and resolve it to a stable RxCUI.
• Formulary management — group brands to their generic/ingredient and by ATC class.
• Pharmacovigilance — normalize free‑text drug mentions and roll them up by MoA/EPC.
• EHR integration — map internal drug records to RxCUIs and NDCs for interoperability.

Term types (TTY) covered

IN, PIN, MIN, BN, SCDC, SBDC, SCDF, SBDF, SCD, SBD, GPCK, BPCK, DF, DFG and more — each output row carries a human‑readable tty_label.

Data source & license

Data © U.S. National Library of Medicine, served by the public RxNav API. Please review NLM terms for your use case.