MEDICAL CODING, A UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE IN THE 21ST CENTURY
January 16, 2017
Since Hippocrates, physicians have tried to classify diseases and related information (signs, symptoms, abnormal findings, social circumstances, external causes, etc). After several inconsistent approaches, the first modern system of codes named the International Classification of Causes of Death was introduced in 1900. It was followed by subsequent revisions about every decade, and renamed later as ICD, the International Classification of Diseases. In 1992 WHO published the current version, ICD-10, which was embraced gradually by most countries, with the latest adopter being United Stated in October 2015. Yet, after ten revisions and over a hundred years, the coding book has become thicker, but its structure has not changed significantly, it is still mono-hierarchical and inconsistent, with diseases classified by their anatomy and occasionally by etiology. For example, while ...