APIs

RxNorm API

getSpellingSuggestions

Information returned
Strings similar to a specified string
Service domain
https://rxnav.nlm.nih.gov
HTTP request
GET  /REST/spellingsuggestions.xml?name=value

Description

Get spelling suggestions for a given term (the name parameter).

The suggestions are terms contained in the current version of the RxNorm data set, listed in decreasing order of closeness to the original phrase.

getSpellingSuggestions is not ideal for finding all extensions of a given stem (such as to suggest complete drug names as someone begins to type on a web form). Instead, consider getDisplayTerms.

Scope

Active: concepts in the current RxNorm data set that have an atom with SAB=RXNORM and SUPPRESS=N

Parameters

ParameterLocationUseDescriptionDefault
formatPathOptional

Notation for results

One of:
.xml
Get results in XML
.json
Get results in JSON
.xml
nameQueryRequiredPossibly misspelled term

All query parameters are case-insensitive.

Note that HTTP requires that query parameters be "URL encoded". For full information on URL encoding, please refer to IETF RFC 3986, "Uniform Resource Identifier".

Output structure

Results are available as either XML or JSON.

  • The XML result has the root element rxnormdata. It is described in the XML Schema for the RxNorm API; the relevant element structure is summarized below. Elements that would be empty might be left out.

  • The JSON result is an object {...}, analogous to the content of the XML rxnormdata. Fields that might occur multiple times in the XML are expressed as an array. Fields that would be empty might be null or left out. Numbers are expressed as strings.

Both XML and JSON results follow the same outline:

rxnormdata
Root element in XML, or anonymous object in JSON
suggestionGroup
name
(Always empty)
suggestionList
suggestion (array)
RxNorm term

Example: Terms like "ambienn"

XML: https://rxnav.nlm.nih.gov/REST/spellingsuggestions?name=ambienn

JSON: https://rxnav.nlm.nih.gov/REST/spellingsuggestions.json?name=ambienn

An XML result is shown below.

<rxnormdata>
    <suggestionGroup>
        ...
        <suggestionList>
            <suggestion>ambien</suggestion>
        </suggestionList>
    </suggestionGroup>
</rxnormdata>