RxNorm autocomplete prescription function

Day-to-Day Users
#1

joelkillspeople wrote on Friday, December 02, 2011:

Hey everyone. I just started helping out a doctor’s office, and they are running OpenEMR 4.1.0. I just got authorization to download RxNorm and SNOMED, and have downloaded and installed both of the databases successfully.

The doctor works at another practice that also runs OpenEMR, and says that when she enters prescriptions, the names autocomplete, and she is able to just select the certain prescription with her mouse. I am not seeing this function added by default, and am wondering what I need to do to get this to appear like it does at her other office.

I had investigated ExNorm further, and see there are two functions that appear in core which may server tihs prupose. One appears to be a Java function, getDisplayTerms( ), and the other appears to be… I think a directory: /displaynames . Could anybody point me towards the documentation in order to replicate this?

Thanks in advance.

#2

bradymiller wrote on Saturday, December 03, 2011:

Hi,

Note the RxNorm/SNOMED databases can be imported, however they have not yet been integrated. Next thing to accomplish for RxNorm is to get the feature you discuss above (provide options of meds from the rxnorm tables and populate the prescription fields for each chosen med appropriately; this is actually not likely going to take too much work; just a volunteer’s time or spondoring a pro. Tracking of this project can be found here:
http://open-emr.org/wiki/index.php/Diagnostic_Codes_Development

I think the OpenEMR feature the physician above is probably using a medication list that is populated in the OpenEMR ‘drug’ mysql table, which I think auto-populates the drug name while typing it in (I could be wrong, but I think that is the table that is used).

-brady

#3

joelkillspeople wrote on Sunday, December 11, 2011:

Ok, great. My question is: how do I get that working?

#4

joelkillspeople wrote on Sunday, December 11, 2011:

addendum: she can search for drugs manually, but she would like to have them auto populated.

#5

bradymiller wrote on Wednesday, December 14, 2011:

Hi,
For the auto-population feature to work, you need to populate the ‘drugs’ mysql table with medications at administraion->other->database->drugs .
I think drugs can be entered by turning on the adminsitration->globals->features->‘Drugs and Products’ and then going to Inventory->Management (in left menu).
-brady

#6

joelkillspeople wrote on Wednesday, December 14, 2011:

Oh awesome. I am hoping I can just have the doctor export the “drugs” database table from her other practice. That would make things a lot easier for her.

One question about the “Drugs and Products” drop-down menu in the feature tab: Which option should I be selecting? It was default to “none”, and I changed it to “inventory and sell both drug and non-drug products.”

#7

bradymiller wrote on Friday, December 16, 2011:

Hi,

Not sure what each selection does. Maybe somebody else can weigh in here and then will be able to update the following wiki pages:
http://www.open-emr.org/wiki/index.php/Pharmacy_Dispensary_Module_Configuration
http://www.open-emr.org/wiki/index.php/Pharmacy_Dispensary_Module
http://www.open-emr.org/wiki/index.php/Administration_Globals#Drugs_and_Products

-brady

#8

xiaoanri wrote on Saturday, April 13, 2013:

i am looking to see if the addition of rxmed would help the prescription process, i have the standard revision RXNORM (release date 3/4/2013) installed on 4.1.1, when using the search function at prescribing, it will return some unusual (and unfamiliar to me, i work in US) names after a LONG time (about 10seconds), no other info about the medicine, no dosing, units, sigs etc auto-polulated.

as brady suggested, it will require to turn on the "drugs and products: in admin/globals/features/drug and products to have the medication autopopulated, i have not try that yet. my question is: the above seems to be a setup for on-site (in-office) pharmacy, just wonder if anybody has tried to use the rxnorm database to help with autopopulating prescription? or it has to be done by turning on the on-site pharmacy?

if anybody used the rxnorm, some instructions/directions is greatly appreciated–i looked at the openemr database, there are 8-9 tables starting with “RX”…

#9

bradymiller wrote on Sunday, April 14, 2013:

Hi,

The rxnorm is not currently integrated into OpenEMR. This is something I was working on about 3 months ago, but have not had time recently to work on. Here’s the code that I have so far (based it on most recent development code):

This project is rather extensive, since the goal is to also integrate it into the Medication Issues also, and more tightly integrate the Prescription module and the Medication list module.

It may be awhile before I will be able to get back to this code; perhaps somebody can sponsor a pro to get this done.

-brady
OpenEMR

#10

xiaoanri wrote on Sunday, April 14, 2013:

Would RXNORM be eventually required for MU? The large data size is a disadvantage. There is also an FDA orange book, much smaller data, just wonder if this could be an alternative to RXNORM where it is supposed to function or satisfy the MU requirement?

#11

bb2013 wrote on Wednesday, January 22, 2014:

Hello Brady,

Your post is from 2011 and wanted to know whether there has been any progress on the RxNorm integration in 4.1.2? I did run accross this code from you Integration of rxnorm into prescriptions. · bradymiller/openemr@3704686 · GitHub but am not sure to what level of integration this takes us. Thanks so much for it an I look forward to your responses.

Thanks,

#12

bradymiller wrote on Thursday, January 23, 2014:

Hi Burt,

Here’s a summary of this project along with links to forum thread and most recent code:
http://www.open-emr.org/wiki/index.php/Active_Projects#Integrate_RXNorm

Note this is now an orphan project, since I don’t have the time to work on it. Hopefully somebody will pick this up or fund somebody to pick this up, since I think it’s very important for OpenEMR to support rxnorm integration out of the box.

-brady
OpenEMR

#13

Has there been any more progress on this topic since the 1/23/2014 post?

DH

#14

hi @dheslinga ,

Still not much out of box support for the full rxnorm database. But there is another method to bring in rxnorm with a much smaller footprint that is actually used in OpenEMR and is discussed here:

-brady