Use CDER’s Phonetic and Orthographic Computer Analysis (POCA) to help identify drug and biologic names that are phonetically and/or orthographically similar to one another. In conducting proprietary name reviews, the Division of Medication Error Prevention and Analysis (DMEPA) evaluates the orthographic and phonetic similarity of a proposed proprietary name to other proprietary or established names using the POCA software program. POCA uses algorithms to assess the similarity of names when spoken or written and assigns a percent similarity score to a given name pair.
