International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems

International Statistical Classification Of Diseases And Related Health Problems

The International Classification of Diseases (most commonly known by the abbreviation ICD) is according to its publisher, the United Nations-sponsored World Health Organization "the standard diagnostic tool for epidemiology, health management and clinical purposes." It is known as a health care classification system that provides codes to classify diseases and a wide variety of signs, symptoms, abnormal findings, complaints, social circumstances, and external causes of injury or disease. Under this system, every health condition can be assigned to a unique category and given a code, up to six characters long. Such categories can include a set of similar diseases.

The International Classification of Diseases is published by the World Health Organization (WHO) and used worldwide for morbidity and mortality statistics, reimbursement systems, and automated decision support in health care. This system is designed to promote international comparability in the collection, processing, classification, and presentation of these statistics. The ICD is a core classification of the WHO Family of International Classifications (WHO-FIC).

The ICD is revised periodically and is currently in its tenth revision. The ICD-10, as it is therefore known, was developed in 1992 to track health statistics. ICD-11 is planned for 2015 and will be revised using Web 2.0 principles. Annual minor updates and triennial major updates are published by the WHO. The ICD is part of a "family" of guides that can be used to complement each other, including also the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health which focuses on the domains of functioning (disability) associated with health conditions, from both medical and social perspectives.