A Semantic Similarity–Based Medicine Alternative Recommender System Using Lightweight Transformer Models

S. Jothir Ram; K. Maniraj

doi:10.64388/IREV9I9-1715481

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A Semantic Similarity–Based Medicine Alternative Recommender System Using Lightweight Transformer Models

S. Jothir Ram K. Maniraj

Subject area: Science,Engineering and Technology · Area of research: Health Care

DOI: 10.64388/IREV9I9-1715481

Abstract

This paper presents a semantic similarity–based medicine alternative recommender system using Sentence-BERT embeddings, hybrid filtering, and a scalable full-stack imple- mentation. The expanded version integrates additional technical sections such as Problem Statement, Motivation, Research Gap, and Algorithmic Workflow, increasing academic rigor while maintaining IEEE format. The system assists pharmacists and patients by generating clinically relevant alternatives when the prescribed drug is unavailable or unaffordable. Experimental evaluation demonstrates large gains over lexical baselines.

Keywords

Medicine Recommendation, Semantic Similarity, SBERT, Drug Alternatives, Healthcare Informatics.

References

[1] N. Reimers and I. Gurevych, “Sentence-Bert: Sentence Embeddings Using Siamese Bert Networks,” Proc. Emnlp, .

[2] J. Lee Et Al., “Biobert: A Pre-Trained Biomedical Language Representation Model for Biomedical Text Mining,” Bioinformatics, 2020.

[3] S. J. Nelson Et Al., “Normalized Names for Clinical Drugs: Rxnorm At 6 Years,” J. Am. Med. Inform. Assoc.

How to cite this paper

S. Jothir Ram, K. Maniraj "A Semantic Similarity–Based Medicine Alternative Recommender System Using Lightweight Transformer Models" Iconic Research And Engineering Journals Volume 9 Issue 9 2026 Page 2436-2441 https://doi.org/10.64388/IREV9I9-1715481

S. Jothir Ram, K. Maniraj "A Semantic Similarity–Based Medicine Alternative Recommender System Using Lightweight Transformer Models" Iconic Research And Engineering Journals, vol. 9, no. 9, Mar. 2026, doi: https://doi.org/10.64388/IREV9I9-1715481

S. Jothir Ram, K. Maniraj (2026). A Semantic Similarity–Based Medicine Alternative Recommender System Using Lightweight Transformer Models. Iconic Research And Engineering Journals, 9(9). doi: https://doi.org/10.64388/IREV9I9-1715481

S. Jothir Ram, K. Maniraj "A Semantic Similarity–Based Medicine Alternative Recommender System Using Lightweight Transformer Models" Iconic Research And Engineering Journals, vol. 9, no. 9, Mar. 2026. Crossref, https://doi.org/10.64388/IREV9I9-1715481

@article{1715481,
      author = {S. Jothir Ram, K. Maniraj},
      title = {A Semantic Similarity–Based Medicine Alternative Recommender System Using Lightweight Transformer Models},
      journal = {Iconic Research And Engineering Journals},
      year = {2026},
      volume = {9},
      number = {9},
      pages = {2436-2441},
      issn = {2456-8880},
      url = {https://www.irejournals.com/formatedpaper/1715481.pdf},
      abstract = {This paper presents a semantic similarity–based medicine alternative recommender system using Sentence-BERT embeddings, hybrid filtering, and a scalable full-stack imple- mentation. The expanded version integrates additional technical sections such as Problem Statement, Motivation, Research Gap, and Algorithmic Workflow, increasing academic rigor while maintaining IEEE format. The system assists pharmacists and patients by generating clinically relevant alternatives when the prescribed drug is unavailable or unaffordable. Experimental evaluation demonstrates large gains over lexical baselines.},
      keywords = {Medicine Recommendation, Semantic Similarity, SBERT, Drug Alternatives, Healthcare Informatics.},
      month = {March},
      doi = {https://doi.org/10.64388/IREV9I9-1715481}
  }