FDA Makes Changes to Drug Name Program

FDA has made “modernized” changes to its Phonetic and Orthographic Computer Analysis (POCA) program, the agency’s software tool that uses an advanced algorithm to determine the orthographic and phonetic similarity between two drug names. “The program can compare a drug name against multiple drug names found in several different data sources contained in the software,” FDA says. The POCA modernized version will be cloud-based and provide the public with a search capability similar to the current public version of POCA. “This cloud-based version will eliminate the complex download processes required in the existing POCA public version of the application,” it says. “This new system will eliminate the need for users to request access to the program and related software from FDA,” the agency says. For more information, visit the POCA program Web page.