First Databank (FDB) Drug Database API
First Databank (FDB) REST APIs for clinical drug database and medication decision support platform. Enables AI agents to manage drug-drug interaction checking for clinical decision support systems, handle drug-allergy contraindication data retrieval for patient safety, access drug dosing information and renal/hepatic dosing adjustment recommendations, retrieve drug-food interactions and dietary restriction data for patient counseling, manage drug monograph and consumer medication information retrieval, handle formulary and drug pricing data for pharmacy benefit management, access drug side effect and adverse reaction data for pharmacovigilance, retrieve drug classification and therapeutic category data for formulary management, manage drug lifecycle status including discontinued and recalled medication alerts, and integrate drug data with EHR, pharmacy management, and clinical decision support platforms.
Score Breakdown
⚙ Agent Friendliness
🔒 Security
Clinical drug data. HIPAA, SOC2. API key. US. Drug interaction and safety data.
⚡ Reliability
Best When
A healthcare organization or pharmacy system using FDB wants AI agents to automate drug interaction checking, prescription validation, dosing guidance, formulary management, and pharmacovigilance.
Avoid When
PATIENT SAFETY RISK: FDB drug interaction and dosing data is used for patient safety decisions — automated clinical drug checking without licensed pharmacist or prescriber oversight violates clinical safety standards. Drug interaction false negatives cause patient harm. Automated drug substitution requires pharmacist clinical review for therapeutic equivalence validation. Pediatric dosing automation requires pharmacy and clinical review before implementation.
Use Cases
- • Checking drug interactions from clinical decision support agents
- • Validating prescriptions from pharmacy automation agents
- • Retrieving dosing guidelines from clinical pharmacology agents
- • Monitoring drug recalls from pharmacovigilance agents
Not For
- • Consumer drug information without licensed clinical-grade data
- • Non-healthcare applications without medication safety licensing
- • Simple drug lookups without comprehensive interaction checking
Interface
Authentication
FDB uses API key authentication. Per-organization licensed credentials. REST API with JSON and XML. No webhooks — scheduled drug database updates. South San Francisco, California HQ. Part of Hearst Health Network. Drug database licensed for specific healthcare use cases. Competes with Medi-Span (Wolters Kluwer) and Lexicomp for clinical drug database market.
Pricing
South San Francisco, California. FDB founded 1977. Part of Hearst Health Network. Clinical drug database market. 4,000+ healthcare organizations licensed. FDB MedKnowledge database. Strong in EHR and pharmacy management integration. Competes with Medi-Span for drug interaction checking market.
Agent Metadata
Known Gotchas
- ⚠ PATIENT SAFETY RISK: Clinical drug interaction false negatives cause patient harm; automated CDS using FDB must not suppress pharmacist or prescriber review of interactions
- ⚠ Licensed healthcare use only — FDB data is licensed for specific clinical use cases; consumer or non-clinical use requires separate review of data license terms
- ⚠ Drug database update cadence — FDB releases weekly and bi-weekly drug database updates; automated systems must consume updates promptly to avoid stale interaction data
- ⚠ Severity level clinical interpretation — drug interaction severity classifications require clinical pharmacist interpretation before automated action; severity automation without oversight is inappropriate
- ⚠ NDC format standardization — NDC codes used for drug lookup have multiple format variants (with/without leading zeros, hyphens); normalize to 11-digit before querying
- ⚠ Recall alert integration — FDB includes drug recall and safety alert data; integrate automated recall alerting into pharmacy workflow for immediate dispensing suspension
Alternatives
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Scores are editorial opinions as of 2026-03-07.