NDC
National Drug Code
The NDC is the FDA identifier for a specific drug product at the package level — identifying manufacturer, product, and package size for dispensing and billing.
The National Drug Code (NDC) is the FDA's unique identifier for drug products in the United States. Each NDC encodes a labeler (manufacturer), a specific product (strength, dosage form, formulation), and a package size — the granularity needed for dispensing, inventory, and claims.
Because NDC is package- and manufacturer-specific, it is more granular than RxNorm's clinical-drug concept. A single RxNorm concept can correspond to many NDCs. Crosswalking between them is a routine but error-prone task that terminology services exist to handle.
NDC appears throughout pharmacy claims (NCPDP Telecom, X12 837), dispensing records, and the drug supply chain, making accurate NDC handling essential for the pharmacy interoperability surface.
How this relates to Health1st
Health1st normalizes and crosswalks NDC ↔ RxNorm at the dispensing granularity pharmacy claims require — for example resolving a product like ATORVASTATIN CALCIUM, NDC 59651-608, to its clinical-drug concept and back.
Related terms
RxNorm is the US normalized naming system for clinical drugs, providing standard identifiers that let different medication vocabularies interoperate.
NCPDP SCRIPT is the national standard for electronic prescribing transactions between prescribers and pharmacies.
RTPB surfaces patient-specific drug coverage and out-of-pocket cost inside the prescribing workflow, so clinicians can pick affordable, covered medications at the point of care.
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