Incorporation of complementary and traditional medicine in ICD-11

Abstract

Traditional medicine (TM) is practiced in various forms in over 180 countries. Despite this, health information systems on TM are limited. Consistent with this, the World Health Organization's (WHO) international classification for diseases (ICD) has not to date included TM concepts. This is now changing, as the WHO has endorsed the reflection of TM paradigms in the new 11th Revision of ICD (ICD-11). Although some countries have had national Traditional Medicine classification systems for many years, information from such systems has not been standardized nor been made available globally. By including TM within the ICD, international standardization will be possible allowing for measuring, counting, comparing, formulating questions and monitoring over time. ICD-11 is a classification system for the twenty-first century, and it now provides an opportunity for interested users to integrate the coding of diagnostic concepts from both TM and Western Medicine. This paper describes the new TM classification in ICD and demonstrates through coding examples how to code TM concepts alongside Western Medicine concepts.

Keywords: Acupuncture; Complementary medicine; ICD-11; International classification of diseases; Traditional Chinese medicine; Traditional medicine.

Fig. 1

Low back pain (Adapted from: Li Xuemei, Zhao Jingyi. Acupuncture patterns and practice. Seattle: Eastland Press, 1993.)

Fig. 2

Graph of number of NIH PubMed articles containing the key word “Acupuncture” (Panel A) and the key word “Traditional Chinese Medicine” (Panel B)