Medication

Overview

The Medication ontology links free-text drug mentions to Eka Care’s medication database — a curated catalogue of branded and generic drugs available in India, with their compositions, forms and manufacturers.

Property	Value
ontology	medication
version	v5.0
metadata	Optional

When to use it

Use the medication ontology to code drug mentions from prescriptions, discharge summaries or clinical notes — for example Dolo 650 or Paracetamol 500mg Tablet.

How it works

The query is segmented into brand name, salt, form and volume; candidates are retrieved from the medication database; and a hybrid matcher compares the parsed query against each candidate’s form, volume and salt.

A drug links (is_linked: true) only when the brand matches and every required attribute — volume, form and qualifiers — matches exactly.

The optional metadata field

metadata is not required, but it helps resolve ambiguous mentions:

Key	Description
form	Medication form, e.g. tablet, capsule, injection.
generic_name	Generic / salt name of the drug.
dose_unit	Dosage unit, e.g. mg, mcg, ml.
dose_custom	Custom dosage string.

If the form and dose are already present in the query (e.g. Dolo 650 Tablet), metadata adds little. It is most useful when the query is terse or the form is implied.

Reading the results

Medication results do not use a numeric score — read the metadata instead:

• term_id — the medication identifier (e.g. b-4117370658)
• is_linked — true when the drug is matched with all required attributes
• metadata.generic_name, generic_composition, manufacturer_name, product_type, is_otc — catalogue detail for the drug
• metadata.matching_breakdown — per-attribute match detail; when a drug does not link, uncoded_reason explains why (e.g. volume_mismatch)
• metadata.linking_requirements — attributes still needed to link confidently (e.g. form_needed)

The response also includes a query_breakdown showing the brand, form and volume parsed from your request.

Example

A query of Dolo 650 with metadata: { "form": "tablet", "generic_name": "paracetamol", "dose_unit": "mg" } links to Dolo 650 Tablet (b-4117370658), composition Paracetamol (650mg), with is_linked: true.

Try it out

See the Link Entity API and select the Medication example to try it.