Development of a Standardized Drug Nomenclature in France

Abstract

The unique and unambiguous identification of drugs is fundamental to ensure interoperability between the different IT processes involved in the exchange of drug data. We present the RUIM (Unique drug interoperability nomenclature), which is based on an ontological model representing the different levels of entities that make up the French drug description. The RUIM integrates different levels of abstraction suitable for specific use cases (e.g. prescription under Nonproprietary Names with virtual drugs). The RUIM is intended to be mapped to international standards such as IDMP. It contains 132 000 concepts and can be viewed and downloaded at https://smt.esante.gouv.fr/.

Keywords: drug model; ontology; standardization; terminology server.