Background
Historically the ICD has been revised every ten years (with the exception of recent revisions) to ensure its continued currency and utility. The current revision (ICD-10) was approved by the World Health Assembly (WHA), the decision making body of the World Health Organization (WHO), in 1990. It was first implemented in WHO-member countries in 1994. Australian implementation occurred in 1997 with ICD-10 being used for reporting mortality data, and in 1998 an Australian modification was made for morbidity coding. The eleventh update and revision process (ICD-11) was initiated by WHO in 2007.
Use cases
Two of the stated goals of the revision process are to: establish a classification-terminology linkage from ICD-11 to the Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine—Clinical Terms, and minimise the need for country specific modifications by creating a structure within the ICD-11 to accommodate such modifications. It is envisaged the classification will serve the needs of multiple use cases, which include:
- coding mortality (causes of death)
- coding morbidity (diseases and related health problems)
- specialty adaptations and uses in different settings (e.g. primary care, clinical care) for different purposes (e.g. research, public health monitoring and safety and quality measures, etc.), and
- scientific consensus as high-level clinical phenotypes.
The eleventh revision will also need to bear consistency across these different uses so that data can be exchanged meaningfully. Details of the revision process can be found in the Production of ICD-11: The overall revision process paper and in the ICD-11 project plan.
Revision Steering Group
The revision process is being co-ordinated through a Revision Steering Group (RSG), that has a number of
Topic Advisory Groups (TAG) reporting to it. The TAG serve as the planning and coordinating advisory body for key issues in the update and revision process.
The WHO determines membership of the groups - they are not representative of WHO member countries. For more information on Australians involved in the groups as classification experts, see ACC members participating on WHO-FIC committees and reference groups (64KB PDF).
Revision process
Currently, an alpha draft of ICD-11 is being compiled by the RSG and TAG, and this was opened to the public for review in July 2011. This was the first step in allowing wider participation of the global health community and multiple stakeholders in the development process for the ICD-11 revision.
The beta draft of ICD-11 was released in May 2012, in the form of a publicly viewable browser similar to the alpha drafting platform. The WHO will also release protocols for field testing and bridge coding of the beta version.
It is expected ICD-11 will be approved by the WHA in 2015 and will replace ICD-10 as the classification for reporting of morbidity and mortality (for implementation by WHO member countries at a later date). The decision on implementation of ICD-11 for mortality and morbidity coding within Australia is yet to be considered. The new classification may not be called ICD-11, but by another name such as ICD 2015. Further information about the ICD-11 revision process can be found on the WHO website.
In July 2011, the AIHW (as the ACC) hosted an Australian event to announce the ICD-11 revision process. This event, titled Think before you measure, was held in association with a symposium on classifications and hosted by the University of Sydney. The event announced the ICD-11 revision and the opportunity for public review to promote participation in the process. Presentations from the event can be found at Towards ICD-11 for Australia.
Further information on international activities related to the ICD-11 development can be found on the WHO website.
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