HealDB - an open portuguese language database for health information systems

HealDB is an open, extensible, relational database whose core structure, in Portuguese, was derived from open data provided by primary Brazilian health regulatory sources. It was constructed to serve as a basis for health information systems that require standardized data sources for researchers and practitioners in Brazil. It notably includes curated structured information on medications, and drug leaflets in Portuguese released by the Brazilian ANVISA. Textual sections from these leaflets were analyzed to identify the diseases treated by each medication, which were then standardized using ICD-10 codes. Each medication is composed of one or more active ingredients. These active ingredients were used to identify hundreds of thousands of drug-drug and drug-food interactions through an extensive cross-checking process with DrugBank, a public database containing information on drugs, their mechanisms of action, interactions, and targets. Additionally, HealDB includes external identifiers linked to each active ingredient, enabling interoperability with major health-related data sources such as ChEBI, RxNorm, PubChem, IUCN Red List, ATC, ClinicalTrials.gov, among others.