October 19, 2017
Searching by Unique Ingredient Identifier Now Available
Users can now search DailyMed by unique ingredient identifier (UNII) for an active ingredient and an active moiety. Instead of relying on drug or chemical names, which vary across countries and regions, searching by UNII allows DailyMed to retrieve drug product records by ingredient using a common global identifier.
A UNII is a globally used, non-proprietary, free, unique, unambiguous, non-semantic, alphanumeric identifier based on a substance's molecular structure and/or descriptive information. The joint Food and Drug Administration (FDA)/ United States Pharmacopeia (USP) Substance Registration System (SRS) assigns a UNII to a substance when enough information is collected.
To illustrate, a common active ingredient in anti-allergy medications is diphenhydramine hydrochloride with UNII TC2D6JAD40. Searching "TC2D6JAD40" in DailyMed retrieves over 1500 drug product records. Diphenhydramine with UNII 8GTS82S83M is the active moiety of diphenhydramine hydrochloride. Searching "8GTS82S83M" retrieves over 1600 records as of Oct 2017.