National Drug Code

Source FDA

The FDA descibes the National Drug Code Data in the following way:

"The Drug Listing Act of 1972 requires registered drug establishments to provide the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) with a current list of all drugs manufactured, prepared, propagated, compounded, or processed by it for commercial distribution. (See Section 510 of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (Act) (21 U.S.C. § 360)). Drug products are identified and reported using a unique, three-segment number, called the National Drug Code (NDC), which serves as a universal product identifier for drugs. FDA publishes the listed NDC numbers and the information submitted as part of the listing information in the NDC Directory which is updated daily. The information submitted as part of the listing process, the NDC number, and the NDC Directory are used in the implementation and enforcement of the Act."

NBER affiliates can access this and other data through the NBER computing system. Files can be located using the directory path of each download link replacing "https://data.nber.org/" with "/homes/data/". These FDA NDC datasets can be found under "/homes/data/fda/ndc" on the internal NBER computer cluster. For more information on the data available on the internal server see NBER Internal Data Collection page.

The FDA offers an NDC searchable database.

The National Drug Code (NDC) Directory data is offered here in SAS, Stata, and CSV formats to make the whole database a bit easier to use. The NDC is updated daily, this version offered here is from September 6th, 2022.

Data Type (Link to File Definitions)	File Type
Package	dta, sas, csv
Product	dta, sas, csv

Previous Data (May 2018)

Data Type	File Type	Documentation
Package	dta, 244, sas, csv	doc, desc
Product	dta, 244, sas, csv	doc, desc

Pre-Stata13 had a string length limit of 244 characters.

Some additional historic files are available in the CCYY/CCYYMMDD folders where CCYY is the year, MM is the month, and DD is the day.

Deliveries from June 2, 2012 and earlier do not contain the NDC variable. Instead, they include the three segments of the NDC variable: the labeler code, product code, and package size code.

Jean Roth created the NDC to labeler code product code crosswalk based on the FDA NDC data deliveries from January 8, 2007 through June 2, 2012. and the NDC to labeler code, product code, and package size crosswalk based upon CMS' Medicaid State Drug Utiization data for 1991 on to address this.

Jean Roth created the ndc to labeler code and product code crosswalk files below to address this.

20120602

Data Type	File Type	Documentation
DEA Schedule Designation	source, dta, sas, csv	desc
Dosage Form	source, dta, sas, csv	desc
Dosage Form Codes	source, dta, sas, csv	desc
Firm Name	source, dta, sas, csv	desc
Formulations	source, dta, sas, csv	desc
Listings	source, dta, sas, csv	desc
New Drug Application	source, dta, sas, csv	desc
Packages	source, dta, sas, csv	desc
Potency Unit Abbreviations	source, dta, sas, csv	desc
Registered Sites	source, dta, sas, csv	desc
Route Codes	source, dta, sas, csv	desc
Route of Administration	source, dta, sas, csv	desc

Old NDC Data File 10/20/2011

Data Type	File Type	Documentation
DEA Schedule Designation	source, dta, sas, csv	desc
Dosage Form	source, dta, sas, csv	desc
Dosage Form Codes	source, dta, sas, csv	desc
Firm Name	source, dta, sas, csv	desc
Formulations	source, dta, sas, csv	desc
Listings	source, dta, sas, csv	desc
New Drug Application	source, dta, sas, csv	desc
Packages	source, dta, sas, csv	desc
Potency Unit Abbreviations	source, dta, sas, csv	desc
Registered Sites	source, dta, sas, csv	desc
Route Codes	source, dta, sas, csv	desc
Route of Administration	source, dta, sas, csv	desc

Old NDC Data File 06/11/2011

Data Type	File Type	Documentation
DEA Schedule Designation	source, dta, sas, csv	desc
Dosage Form	source, dta, sas, csv	desc
Dosage Form Codes	source, dta, sas, csv	desc
Firm Name	source, dta, sas, csv	desc
Formulations	source, dta, sas, csv	desc
Listings	source, dta, sas, csv	desc
New Drug Application	source, dta, sas, csv	desc
Packages	source, dta, sas, csv	desc
Potency Unit Abbreviations	source, dta, sas, csv	desc
Registered Sites	source, dta, sas, csv	desc
Route Codes	source, dta, sas, csv	desc
Route of Administration	source, dta, sas, csv	desc

Old NDC Data File 01/03/2011

Data Type	File Type	Documentation
DEA Schedule Designation	source, dta, sas, csv	desc
Dosage Form	source, dta, sas, csv	desc
Dosage Form Codes	source, dta, sas, csv	desc
Firm Name	source, dta, sas, csv	desc
Formulations	source, dta, sas, csv	desc
Listings	source, dta, sas, csv	desc
New Drug Application	source, dta, sas, csv	desc
Packages	source, dta, sas, csv	desc
Potency Unit Abbreviations	source, dta, sas, csv	desc
Registered Sites	source, dta, sas, csv	desc
Route Codes	source, dta, sas, csv	desc
Route of Administration	source, dta, sas, csv	desc

20100701

Listings

Packages

Formulations

New Drug Application

Source

Stata

SAS

CSV

Desc

Source

Stata

SAS

CSV

Desc

Source

Stata

SAS

CSV

Desc

Source

Stata

SAS

CSV

Desc

National Drug Code

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