2018 Volume 67 Issue 5 Pages 499-507
Objectives: WHO and the WHO-FIC Network have been developing the International Classification of Health Interventions (ICHI) since 2007. The aim is to meet a number of use cases including international comparisons, providing a classification for countries that lack one and to provide expanded content for countries that have a national classification focused on medical and surgical interventions. ICHI is under development and publishes ICHI Beta-2 2018 as a provisional version. The Japanese Health Insurance Federation for Surgery (JHIFS) has been developing STEM7 since 2008. This study clarified the trend of ICHI and compared the ICHI code with K code and STEM7. We examined the use of ICHI in Japan to determine if there are any problem.
Methods: K code used is the 2018 version, STEM7 used is version 9.1, ICHI code used is ICHI Beta-2 2018 version. While presenting concrete examples, this paper examines the differences in the basic structure of each code.
Result: STEM7 describes operative interventions using four axes: Operation target part, Basic procedure, Approach method and Auxiliary equipment. ICHI code describes health interventions using the three axes: Target, Action and Means, which is similar to STEM7. ICHI covers all medical Interventions, body functions and activities, the environment, and health-related behaviors. Users may choose to record a range of additional information using Extension codes.
Conclusion: By using the Extension code of ICHI, it is possible to refine the classification of medical interventions. It is a very useful code, but it is difficult to understand. In this paper, we presented examples of using Extension code. It is expected that this will deepen the understanding of ICHI. After ICHI is approved, it can be expected that ICHI’s domestic correspondence will be smooth.
