PharmEcology
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
How Does The Search Logic Work?

The PharmE® Waste Wizard allows you to look up a product by NDC number, by product name, by generic name, or by ingredient. Our goal is to make it easy to find products and have the Wizard work as intuitively as possible. However, in case you have a detailed question or are simply interested in the inner workings of the database, we describe the actual search logic here.

Search by Full NDC Number:

The simplest way to find a product is to directly enter in the NDC number. You can enter an NDC number as it appears on the product, with or without entering the hyphens. Most NDC numbers carry a "NNNNN-NNNN-NN" format, and you can enter the full NDC number although it is not necessary to enter leading zeroes in any component of the NDC number.

For example, NDC number "00067-0830-07" is a form of Habitrol from Novartis. You can find this product in several ways such as by entering the full NDC number as shown, or by entering "67-830-7", "67-0830-7", "67-0830-07", or "67083007".

Note that while most products have the NDC format shown above, a few products are identified by a UPC based format such as "NNNNN-NNNNN". To find these products you should enter the NDC number as presented by the manufacturer, although in these cases you need to enter all the digits to the right of the hyphen.

Search by Partial NDC Number:

The Wizard also allows you to enter the first two portions of an NDC and omit the third portion. In this case, it will return a list of all NDCs within that base NDC and ask you to select the particular product you are looking for.

Search by Product Name:

You can look up a product by the name as it appears on the packaging. This name may be a brand name, such as "Humibid", a trade name for a generic version of a product, such as "Guaifenex", or, in some instances, the actual generic name of a drug, if that's how it's packaged, such as "Guaifenesin".

Search by Generic Name or Active Ingredient:

You can also look up a product by the generic name of any of its active ingredients. If a product has multiple active ingredients, you can look it up by any of those ingredients.

Partial Name Searches:

In all cases, you only need to enter the beginning of the name. If multiple products fit match the name, the system will prompt you with a list of products to allow you to easily select the specific product you are looking for.

Upper or Lower Case?

You decide! You can enter your search criteria in either upper or lower case. The system will find matching products no matter how they're stored on the database.

Narrowing Your Search:

Some searches can produce a long list of results. You can shorten this list by entering the beginning of the manufacturer's name or by entering the numeric portion of the strength.