Sewa
Sources

Every clinical claim cites a public source.

Sewa is built on government and peer-reviewed data. Each dataset below is documented with what it covers, where it comes from, and how it’s used in the schedule.

7 datasetsAll publicly licensedUpdated Mar 14, 2026
Drug names
~140k
Brand and generic names normalized via RxNorm
FDA labels
~80k
SPL-formatted drug labels in openFDA
Curated rules
12
Hand-verified, FDA-cited timing rules
DDInter pairs
37,687
DDInter v2.0 Major-severity subset, 1,492 drugs covered

Primary clinical sources

Used at runtime
U.S. National Library of Medicine · Updated weekly
ActiveREST API
What it covers
Normalized names and identifiers (RxCUIs) for prescription and OTC drugs in the U.S. Maps brand names, generic names, salts, and dose forms to a unified concept.
How Sewa uses it
Each parsed medication is sent to the RxNorm REST API to resolve a rxcui. All downstream queries use the RxCUI, never the raw name.
License
Public domain (U.S. government work). UMLS Metathesaurus license terms apply to bundled vocabularies.
U.S. Food & Drug Administration · Updated daily
ActiveREST API
What it covers
Structured Product Labeling (SPL) drug labels — dosage & administration, contraindications, drug interactions, clinical pharmacology, and more.
How Sewa uses it
Fetches the indications_and_usage, dosage_and_administration, and drug_interactions sections by RxCUI. Cited at the section level (e.g., FDA §2.1).
License
Public domain. Rate-limited by API key (we proxy with caching).
U.S. National Library of Medicine · Updated continuously
ActiveWeb services
What it covers
Authoritative source of the same SPL labels in openFDA, with additional historical and version data. Used as a fallback and for label provenance.
How Sewa uses it
Falls back to DailyMed when openFDA returns no record for a particular RxCUI. Same access pattern — RxCUI only.
License
Public domain.

Interaction & timing rule sources

Curated dataset
Phansalkar et al., JAMIA 2013 · Status: archived
Archived 2024PDF · 8pp
What it covers
Minimum list of drug-drug interactions recommended for clinical decision support. Originally published by the ONC, peer-reviewed. 302 paired rules, severity-graded.
How Sewa uses it
Target core dataset — transcription from the published PDF into structured JSON is in progress. Each shipping rule cites ONCHigh #N. Quarterly review.
License
Public domain (U.S. government work). The original ONC API was discontinued Jan 2024; the underlying paper remains the authoritative reference.
AZCERT · Updated continuously
ActivePublic lists
What it covers
Drugs associated with QT prolongation and torsades de pointes, graded by risk: Known / Possible / Conditional / Avoid in congenital LQTS.
How Sewa uses it
QT-prolonging drugs are flagged when multiple appear in the same regimen — combination raises risk multiplicatively. Cited as CredibleMeds [tier].
License
Free for individual use. Public, registered. Display only — no redistribution as raw data.
Curated timing rules (Sewa)
Maintained in repo · 12 rules · Last reviewed Mar 2026
CuratedJSON
What it covers
Specific timing rules derived from FDA labels — e.g., levothyroxine ↔ calcium 4h gap, tetracyclines ↔ dairy 2h gap, sucralfate ↔ ciprofloxacin 6h gap.
How Sewa uses it
Each rule is a small JSON object with the two RxCUI patterns, a required gap, and a citation to the originating FDA label section. Subject to quarterly review.
License
CC-BY 4.0. Source of truth: dataset/interactions.json in the project repository. Reviewed quarterly.
Xiong et al., Nucleic Acids Research 2024 · v2.0 · Ingested 2026-05-16
Active37,687 pairs
What it covers
Sewa ingests DDInter 2.0’s Major-severity drug-drug interactions (37,687 pairs across 1,492 drugs, RxCUI-keyed). Used as a secondary tier for pairs the curated set doesn’t cover. Curated rules always win on overlap.
How Sewa uses it
When a DDInter-sourced flag appears in your schedule, Sewa reports the severity and points you to your pharmacist — the bulk DDInter download does not include mechanism or management text, so we’re not in a position to repeat clinical guidance ourselves. Moderate, Minor, and Unknown-severity records are present in the parsed dataset but not surfaced in v0.1 — they introduce more clinical noise than signal at the patient-to-pharmacist handoff. Your pharmacist has access to fuller interaction databases (Lexicomp, Micromedex) for comprehensive screening.
License
CC BY-NC 4.0. Frozen at v2.0; see ddinter.scbdd.com for the live database. Crosswalk coverage: 90.3% of DDInter drug names resolved to an RxCUI via NLM RxNorm.

Anatomy of a citation

How traceability works
Example placement reasoning
“Wait at least 4 hours after levothyroxine before taking calcium — calcium binds thyroid hormone in the gut and prevents absorption.”
Source rule · ONCHigh #047Confirmed by · FDA Label §7 (Levothyroxine)Applied to · RxCUI 10582 ↔ RxCUI 1986Solver constraint · gap ≥ 240min

Recent source updates

Changelog · last 90 days
Mar 14, 2026
Added 3 timing rules for newer DPP-4 inhibitors based on updated label data. Quarterly review complete.
timing-rules.json
Feb 22, 2026
Synced CredibleMeds QTDrugs list. 2 drugs moved from “Possible” to “Known” risk tier.
crediblemeds.json
Feb 03, 2026
Fixed RxNorm normalization for combination products (e.g., losartan/HCTZ) that previously resolved to the first ingredient only.
rxnorm-resolver.ts
Jan 19, 2026
Added DailyMed fallback for 14 specialty drugs missing from openFDA.
label-fetcher.ts
Jan 02, 2026
Initial ONCHigh transcription begins. Target 302 rules; currently shipping 12 entries.
onchigh.json
What about commercial drug databases? Sewa intentionally does not use commercial interaction databases like Lexicomp, Micromedex, or First Databank. Those datasets are excellent, but their licensing prohibits redistribution and would defeat the public-good purpose of this tool. We rely on government and peer-reviewed sources, accept that the coverage is narrower, and surface that limitation clearly: read the methodology page for details on what Sewa does and doesn’t catch.