International Nonproprietary Name

An international nonproprietary name, or INN for short, is like a special name that doctors, scientists, and other people who work with medicine use to talk about different drugs.

When a new drug is created, the company that makes it usually gives it a special name that they can use to market it, like “Advil” or “Tylenol”. But since there can be lots of different drugs that have the same active ingredient or the same purpose, it can get pretty confusing when everyone uses different names to talk about them.

That’s where the INN comes in! The World Health Organization (WHO) is a big organization that helps keep people healthy all around the world. They have a special group of people who decide on a special, generic name for each new drug that comes out, based on what the drug does or what it’s made of. This name is the INN.

So, instead of lots of different companies calling their headache medicine lots of different names, they can all call it by the same name - like “ibuprofen” - and everyone will know what they’re talking about. It’s like everyone agreeing to speak the same language!

This can help make sure that doctors and scientists from all around the world can understand each other and work together to make sure people get the right treatments for their illnesses.