Creation of a unified global system of medicines names: an evidence analysis

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11635653

Keywords:

medicinal product, naming, trade name, international nonproprietary names, medication error, drug information.

Abstract

Introduction. The range of medicines with various trade names is extremely large and constantly growing. This is the reason for inadequate selection of medicines and medical errors. The aim: To study the problems of the modern state of medicines naming and to determine the ways of its solution. Materials and methods. General scientific methods of cognition are used: analysis and synthesis, abstraction, deduction, modeling, generalization. The materials were publications from the Google Scholar and PubMed electronic search systems, the Crossref bibliographic database for the period 1984-2024. The following keywords were chosen: medicine and drug, naming, international nonproprietary names, trade name, original drug, generic, brand, branded generic, chemical name, medication error, drug information. Results. It was found that the huge number of trade names of medicinal products causes informational problems with possible clinical consequences. Today, there is no international regulatory system that would guarantee that the trade names of medicines from different manufacturers from different countries differed enough to avoid the risk of incorrect prescriptions due to confusion of their names. It is obvious that the breadth of the modern pharmaceutical market and the huge number of trade names of medicines on it are the reasons for their inadequate selection and medical errors. Conclusions. Based on the results of the study of the problems of the modern system of drug names, the possibility of errors in the use of drugs due to the similarity of their trade names, it is proposed to create, under the auspices of the WHO, a single global system of trade names of drugs based on the globally accepted system of international non-proprietary names, which consists of that the trade name must contain the international non-proprietary name and the name of the manufacturer. The unified global system of trade names of medicines will allow the doctor, pharmacist and patient to choose a generic medicine with a high-quality composition of the active pharmaceutical ingredient and auxiliary substances.

Key words: medicinal product, naming,  trade name, international nonproprietary names, medication error, drug information.

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Published

2024-06-15

How to Cite

Oliinyk, P. ., Hromovyk, B. ., Humeniuk, V. ., Oliinyk, S. ., & Rybachuk, A. . (2024). Creation of a unified global system of medicines names: an evidence analysis. Annals of Mechnikov’s Institute, (2), 7–12. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.11635653

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Research Articles