RxNorm Drug Name Normalizer — RxCUI Match API

Normalize messy medication strings to one best active RxNorm concept using the U.S. National Library of Medicine RxNav REST API.

Use it for medication-list cleanup, record matching, terminology normalization, interoperability preprocessing, RxCUI resolution, and automated healthcare-data workflows.

This product uses publicly available data from the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services; NLM is not responsible for the product and does not endorse or recommend this or any other product.

Not medical advice. This Actor normalizes terminology only. It does not determine whether a medication is appropriate, safe, equivalent, prescribed, or clinically indicated.

Common use cases

• Normalize inconsistent medication strings to canonical RxNorm names
• Resolve medication text to RxCUI identifiers
• Clean medication lists before matching or analysis
• Standardize terminology across imported healthcare datasets
• Feed normalized drug concepts into downstream interoperability workflows

What you get

One row per input string can include input index/string, match status, RxCUI, canonical active RxNorm name, synonym when supplied, term type (TTY), language, approximate-match score/rank, current RxNorm version, and source provenance.

Try it

{
  "drugNames": ["aspirin", "metformin 500 mg tablet", "lipitor 20 mg tablet"],
  "maxCandidates": 5
}

Source and service policy

• RxNorm/RxNav API: https://rxnav.nlm.nih.gov/REST/
• NLM permits use of the RxNorm API free of charge and generally without a license for RxNorm vocabulary data.
• NLM limits the online APIs to 20 requests/second/IP and recommends caching for repeated lookups.
• This Actor globally spaces upstream calls to about 8 requests/second or less, including concept-property lookups.

Important limitations

A no-match input produces a diagnostic row. If all inputs are unmatched, a non-billed summary row is also written.

Normalization is terminology matching only. A matched RxNorm concept is not a determination of therapeutic equivalence, prescribing intent, dosage appropriateness, safety, or clinical indication.

Pricing

Only inputs successfully normalized to an active RxNorm concept are billed. Not-found diagnostics and zero-result/budget summaries are not billed.

Candidate target: $0.25 per 1,000 successful normalizations.

About Piven Core

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Learn more: https://pivencore.com