WHO Drug Coding

Coding within WHO Drug can be a significant challenge. A Who Drug coder must first correctly identify the drug being reported, and then choose the correct entry from the many possibilities available in the dictionary. Moreover, the WHO Drug dictionary itself contains many quirks and idiosyncrasies which could easily cause an inexperienced coder to code to the wrong dictionary entry.

ThesIS coders have been coding drugs for many years.

Our coders know how to correctly identify each drug being reported. They have an extremely effective process that utilizes source references compiled from years of drug coding to quickly and accurately identify even the most obscure drugs. In addition, we have an extensive proprietary drug dictionary (with origins going back more than two decades) that further helps us identify lesser-known drugs.

ThesIS coders also have an in-depth understanding of WHO Drug. They are intimately knowledgeable about all the WHO Drug formats, and have well-established coding conventions for handling all of the issues that can arise when coding drugs, such as:

• Drugs not found in WHO Drug
• Multiple entries in WHO Drug with the same drug name
• Discrepancies between WHO Drug and published references for the ingredients for a drug
• Multi-ingredient drugs

Furthermore, our coders' well-developed familiarity with the worldwide drug market and of WHO Drug ensures drugs that have very similar names are correctly coded.

ThesIS coders use our powerful thesaurus system, which allows them to view the complete set of information (including all ingredients and ATC codes) provided within WHO Drug for each drug. They can access this information for, as well as code to, all WHO Drug formats (B1, B2 and C).

Choosing and maintaining ATC codes made easy.

A reported drug may be coded to a WHO Drug entry that has more than one ATC code available. We have a very efficient process to identify instances where your data has been coded to a WHO Drug entry with multiple ATC codes and for you to choose your preferred ATC code for each of these WHO Drug entries.

Each time you choose an ATC code, we store and maintain that selection so that it automatically becomes your company default the next time a reported drug is coded to that WHO Drug entry.