WHO Drug Dictionary Enhanced

The WHO Drug Dictionary Enhanced is the world’s most comprehensive dictionary of medicinal product information. It is used by pharmaceutical companies, clinical research organisations and drug regulatory authorities for identifying drug names, their active ingredients and therapeutic use, in the course of their drug safety surveillance. It translates a drug name to useful information, which is used for coding and analysis of drug safety data – both pre- and post- marketing.

The majority of entries refer to prescription-only products, but some are over-the-counter (OTC) or pharmacist-dispensed. Biotech and blood products, diagnostic substances and contrast media are also entered in the dictionary.

To be able to increase the coverage in a larger number of countries and to get fast access to information about new releases the UMC has entered collaboration with IMS Health. The result of this collaboration is called WHO Drug Dictionary Enhanced.

The new WHO Drug Dictionary Enhanced contains the data from the WHO Drug Dictionary and from the IMS Health data. It is produced in the same formats and with the same principles as the previous WHO Drug Dictionary.

The main benefits offered by the WHO Drug Dictionary Enhanced are:

  • Consistent, quality-assured, and up-to-date information entry
  • A hierarchical structure that allows easy and flexible data-retrieval and analysis at different levels of precision
  • Chemical and therapeutic groupings - using the WHO drug record number system and the ATC classification
  • Available in software-independent electronic format for easy implementation in user systems

Since the WHO Drug Dictionary Enhanced contains a higher than ever percentage of all product names that appear as co-medication, the need for manual investigations and fact-finding will be reduced. Since you are more likely to find a direct match in the dictionary it also reduces the need for making assumptions and guesses - which increases the quality of your coded data.

For hundreds of organisations around the world, the dictionary is a prime desk-reference for a wide range of tasks. The UMC is keen that it should fully meet the needs of all its users (and of users to come), and responds quickly to requests for new entries or to other suggestions which are compatible with the fundamental structure and will enhance its usefulness.

New drugs are constantly introduced on the market in all countries of the world, and sometimes the products on the market are modified. To help you keep track of these changes the WHO Drug Dictionary Enhanced is updated four times per year.

Are you already a subscriber to the dictionary? You can find more information, documents discussion groups at the WHO Drug Dictionary User Group Portal - www.umc-products.com/usergroup

New naming of dictionary versions

Up till March 2005 the versions of the WHO Drug Dictionary have been known as Quarter 1, Quarter 2, Quarter 3 and Quarter 4. These names have referred to the quarter during which the data has been entered into the dictionary.
From a customer’s perspective this has been confusing since Quarter 1 has been distributed in June etc. To avoid confusion we will in the future refer to the releases with the names – dates – in the list below:
  • March 1
  • June 1
  • September 1
  • December 1

For more information please read the release plan (pdf).