Changing Vocabulary: Pharmacy
- Started with 2091 drugs
- In two years, added 1827 drugs
- Classification by:
- Ingredients
- AHFS Class
- Allergy
- DEA
- Form
As an example of a maintenance process, I will describe how we keep up with the pharmacy vocabulary, specifically the formulary containing all the drug terms. We started with 2091 drugs and over the ensuing two years, have almost double this number. The drug terms are particularly troublesome because they need to be included in several classes. (NB: AHFS stands for American Hospital Formulary Service Classification which groups drugs into categories like "antibiotic" and "diuretic"; DEA stands for Drug Enforcement Administration, which classifies drugs by their addictive potential.)