Coding acute stroke care and telestroke with the International Classification of Health Interventions (ICHI)

[ICD-11, ICHI and SNOMED CT-What do the standards mean for eHealth applications?]

BACKGROUND

Medical documentation is no longer used primarily for administrative processes or healthcare billing, but for the entire electronic health record with accompanying eHealth use cases.

OBJECTIVES

It shall be examined to what extent classifications such as the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD-11) and the International Classification of Health Interventions (ICHI), in comparison to the international reference terminology SNOMED CT, meet the requirements of current eHealth applications and ensure interoperability.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

The strengths and weaknesses of ICD-11 and ICHI are highlighted in terms of literature, contextual mapping within the international patient summary, telemedicine applications and the use in IT standards, such as HL7 in comparison to SNOMED CT.

RESULTS

The whole range of medical terminology is not covered by ICHI and ICD-10, but with SNOMED CT, because ICD-11 and ICHI may be used in strict limitations to annotate procedures and diagnosis. A sample value set (n = 30) shows high mapping equivalence in SNOMED CT. In the literature, ICD-11 to SNOMED CT mappings are described as complex and error-prone.

CONCLUSIONS

In terms of content expressivity and international usability, the potential of SNOMED CT in eHealth applications can be considered more favorable than ICD-11 or ICHI, even considering the original scope of these classifications, diagnoses and procedures. ICHI may even be recommended for specific use cases (e. g. statistics).

Visibility of Community Nursing Within an Administrative Health Classification System: Evaluation of Content Coverage

Background

The World Health Organization is in the process of developing an international administrative classification for health called the International Classification of Health Interventions (ICHI). The purpose of ICHI is to provide a tool for supporting intervention reporting and analysis at a global level for policy development and beyond. Nurses represent the largest resource carrying out clinical interventions in any health system. With the shift in nursing care from hospital to community settings in many countries, it is important to ensure that community nursing interventions are present in any international health information system. Thus, an investigation into the extent to which community nursing interventions were covered in ICHI was needed.

Objective

The objectives of this study were to examine the extent to which International Classification for Nursing Practice (ICNP) community nursing interventions were represented in the ICHI administrative classification system, to identify themes related to gaps in coverage, and to support continued advancements in understanding the complexities of knowledge representation in standardized clinical terminologies and classifications.

Methods

This descriptive study used a content mapping approach in 2 phases in 2018. A total of 187 nursing intervention codes were extracted from the ICNP Community Nursing Catalogue and mapped to ICHI. In phase 1, 2 coders completed independent mapping activities. In phase 2, the 2 coders compared each list and discussed concept matches until consensus on ICNP-ICHI match and on mapping relationship was reached.

Results

The initial percentage agreement between the 2 coders was 47% (n=88), but reached 100% with consensus processes. After consensus was reached, 151 (81%) of the community nursing interventions resulted in an ICHI match. A total of 36 (19%) of community nursing interventions had no match to ICHI content. A total of 100 (53%) community nursing interventions resulted in a broader ICHI code, 9 (5%) resulted in a narrower ICHI code, and 42 (23%) were considered equivalent. ICNP concepts that were not represented in ICHI were thematically grouped into the categories family and caregivers, death and dying, and case management.

Conclusions

Overall, the content mapping yielded similar results to other content mapping studies in nursing. However, it also found areas of missing concept coverage, difficulties with interterminology mapping, and further need to develop mapping methods.