What improvements have been made to ICD-11? The ICD provides a
common language that allows health professionals to share
standardized information across the world. It is the foundation for
identifying health trends and statistics worldwide, containing around
17 000 unique codes for injuries, diseases, and causes of death,
underpinned by more than 120,000 codable terms. By using code
combinations, more than 1.6 million clinical situations can now be
coded. Compared with previous versions, ICD-11 is entirely digital
with a new user-friendly format and multilingual capabilities that
reduce the chance of error. It has been compiled and updated with
input from over 90 countries and unprecedented involvement of
healthcare providers, enabling evolution from a system imposed on
clinicians into a truly enabling clinical classification and terminology
database that serves a broad range of uses for recording and
reporting statistics on health.
What qualities of this coding system would be beneficial to a country
looking to adopt it? A key principle in this revision was to simplify the
coding and provide users with all necessary electronic tooling, this
will allow healthcare professionals to easily and completely record
conditions. In addition to coding and capability updates, ICD-11
includes new chapters on traditional medicine, sexual health, and
gaming disorder, which has now been added to the section on
addictive disorders.
Resources:
WHO’s New International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) comes into effect
https://www.who.int/news/item/11-02-2022-who-s-new-
international-classification-of-diseases-(icd-11)-comes-into-effect
