The European Directorate for the Quality of Medicines & HealthCare (EDQM) is a directorate of the Council of Europe which has the vision of creating a common European Pharmacopoeia. This pharmacopeai is an official reference work used by professionals involved in the manufacture and control of medicines. Its objective is to define legally binding quality requirements for medicines and their ingredients. The edQm Standard Terms database contains terms and definitions to describe pharmaceutical dose forms, routes and methods of administration, containers, closures, administration devices and units of presentation. It contains agreed combinations of terms, for example to describe where two or more items are packaged together, or where a pharmaceutical dose form and a container are described using a single term. It also contains patient-friendly terms, which are generally shorter terms that, where justified and authorised by the competent authority, may be used on certain labels where space is limited.
