On May 25th, the World Health Organisation announced that Member States agreed to adopt the eleventh revision of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD-11), to come into effect on 1 January 2022.
ICD is the foundation for the identification of health trends and statistics globally, and the international standard for reporting diseases and health conditions. It is the diagnostic classification standard for all clinical and research purposes. ICD defines the universe of diseases, disorders, injuries and other related health conditions.
The ICD also captures factors influencing health, or external causes of mortality and morbidity, providing an holistic look at every aspect of life that can affect health.
Understanding what makes people sick, and what eventually kills them, is at the core of mapping disease trends and epidemics, deciding how to programme health services, allocate healthcare spending, and invest in improving therapies and prevention. ICD-11 is now fit for many uses, including clinical recording, primary care, patient safety, antimicrobial resistance, resource allocation, reimbursement, casemix, in addition to mortality and morbidity statistics.
ICD-11 has been updated for the 21st century and reflects critical advances in science and medicine. It can be well integrated with electronic health applications and information systems. This new version is fully electronic, allows more detail to be recorded and is significantly easier to use and to implement, which will lead to fewer mistakes and lower costs, and make the tool much more accessible, particularly for low-resource settings.
Member States noted that ICD-11 has been produced in a transparent and collaborative manner. To review ICD-11 click here
