[Corpora-List] medication pronunciations

[Lucian Galescu]

Generics are named by chemists, and there are some regulations/ 
guidelines on what to call them (for example, drugs in the same class  
tend to have a shared stem, which could be a prefix, an infix or a  
suffix)  which makes for rather baroque neologisms.

Pharmaceutical companies probably spend small fortunes on finding good  
names for their drugs, in recognition of the fact that names make  
money. Many times, a successful drug name is recycled if it has proven  
a successful seller; for example at least four drugs sold under the  
name Mylanta have different active ingredients or combinations  
thereof. On the other hand, when they do have to come up with a new  
name, they have a tough task: the name must be distinctive, not too  
similar with the generic name or another proprietary name, not  
suggestive of something that it's not going to deliver (think Rogaine,  
initially proposed as Regaine!), but, at the same time, it has to be  
memorable.

Three or four years back FDA announced that it started using a system  
called POCA (standing for Phonetic and Orthographic Computer Analysis)  
to analyze proposed proprietary names for possible orthographic and/or  
phonetic confusion with existing drug names. For all I know not much  
has been said about it since, but I understand that it is in use. Greg  
Kondrak and Bonnie Dorr worked on that system; it occurs to me that  
they must have had access to or compiled a pronunciation dictionary  
(presumably from the USP Dictionary) though it's quite possible that  
it isn't a free resource (I'd be interested in it, too, if it were!).  
Here's an article about their research:
Kondrak, Grzegorz, and Bonnie J. Dorr, "Identification of Confusable  
Drug Names: A New Approach and Evaluation Methodology",Journal of AI  
in Medicine, Volume 36:1, pp. 29--42, 2006. PDF

Lucian


* * *
Lucian Galescu, PhD
Research Scientist, IHMC


On Mar 29, 2008, at 7:27 PM, Angus Grieve-Smith wrote:

> On Sun, 30 Mar 2008, Dr DJ Hatch wrote:
>
>> But are these labels provided by the marketing people or the  
>> chemists?
>> You seen to suggest the former, Angus.
>
> 	Both, actually, and that's part of the problem.  Every drug has a
> generic name, which generally seem to be made up by chemists, and at  
> least
> one brand name, which seem to be made up by marketing people.  Having
> multiple names for every drug, each name with its own delicate  
> balance of
> similarity to and distinction from the other names, uses up names
> unnecessarily (from the consumer's point of view).  There is a limit  
> to
> the number of drug names that a human being can reasonably be  
> expected to
> hold in memory and distinguish phonologically, and it's a waste to use
> that up on brand distinctions.
>
> 	For example, just last week I was looking for pseudoephedrine
> hydrochloride (brand name Sudafed) in a local pharmacy.  It's usually
> behind the pharmacy counter, so I asked a pharmacist.  She started  
> walking
> towards the cold medicine aisle, which made me realize that she was  
> going
> to give me phenylephrine hydrochloride (brand name Sudafed PE), so I  
> had
> to tell her, "No, I'm looking for pseudoephedrine."  She directed me  
> to
> the front counter, which is where they keep pseudoephedrine in this
> pharmacy.
>
> 	This is a frequent occurrence for me, and it's compounded by the
> fact that I'm used to calling the stuff "Sudafed," and don't have  
> practice
> calling it "pseudoephedrine."  I came up with a "reading  
> pronunciation" of
> the generic name, "sud-EF-a-drin," which is incorrect: the pharmacists
> call it "su-do-ef-ED-rin."  I've learned to pronounce it the correct  
> way,
> but when I'm under stress (like when I'm in a pharmacy trying to get  
> my
> medicine before the pharmacist gets impatient and walks away), my old
> invented pronunciation comes out.
>
> 	I'm not trying to put blame on anyone in particular, I'm just
> pointing out that this is an area where literacy - even a grad school
> education - isn't enough to avoid confusion.  It's a problem largely
> created by the idiosyncracies of the intellectual property system  
> that was
> set up to generate profits for drug companies and thus encourage  
> them to
> produce new drugs.  You can attack it from the literacy angle, but  
> there
> are other angles to it that might be more effective.
>
> 					-Angus B. Grieve-Smith
> 					grvsmth at panix.com
>
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