Drug classification systems: Applications and characteristics

The quality management and financial control of drugs have been considered as a priority for healthcare managers. The drug classification and coding systems, as an information management tool, could be beneficial. The review aims to extract the characteristics of the drug classification systems and identify their main applications in the drug management processes.

For this purpose, the library sources including e-databases PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar search engine, e-files, and specialized websites were searched using keywords “Drug”, “Classification system”, “Coding system”, and “Terminology” alongside their synonyms. The search results were limited to the drug classification systems that categorize drugs and pharmaceutical information using code sets with an appropriate granularity level.  

Twenty-eight drug classification systems were included. Half of these systems are used internationally, and the others are used nationally. All included systems were divided into three categories, based on their features. The domain classification of systems includes human drugs, animal drugs, herbal medicines, dosage forms, drug side effects, and ingredients of medicinal products. Most of them are hierarchically designed. The code structure of these systems was mainly numerical, and some of them were alphabetical-numeric or alphabetical. They are mostly applied for unique identification, interoperability, statistics, pharmacovigilance and drug-related problems, marketing, and artificial intelligence methods.  

The drug classification systems are designed in different ways with respect to their applications. The development of multipurpose systems and provision of  efficient mapping among these systems could be beneficial to improve the drug management processes.