Enabling Hierarchical View of RxNorm with NDF-RT Drug Classes

NDF-RT is the proposed source of drug classification information. We set out to construct a hierarchy of NDF-RT drug classes and RxNorm medications and evaluate it on medication records data. NDF-RT and RxNorm are distributed in different file formats, require different tools to manipulate and linking the two into a hierarchy is a non-trivial exercise. Medication data in RxNorm from two institutions was constrained by the hierarchy. Only 37% of records from one and 65% from another institution were accessible. We subsequently enriched the RxNorm mapping in NDF-RT by exploiting relationships between concepts for branded and generic drugs. Coverage improved dramatically to 93% for both institutions. To improve usability of the resulting hierarchy, we grouped clinical drugs by corresponding clinical drug form.