What is the ICD?

The International Classification serves to record and report health and health-related conditions globally. ICD ensures interoperability of digital health data, and their comparability. The ICD contains diseases, disorders, health conditions and much more. The inclusion of a specific category into ICD depends on utility to the different uses of ICD and sufficient evidence that a health condition exists.    

What is the Traditional Medicine Chapter of ICD-11?

• A separate Chapter within the ICD-11 for optional use. It provides a list of diagnostics categories to collect and report on Traditional Medicine conditions in a standardized and international comparable manner.
• The scope of the chapter is currently covering traditional medicine conditions which originated in ancient China and are now commonly used in China, Japan, Korea and elsewhere around the world (Module I).
• This Traditional Medicine chapter is a formative step for the integration of Traditional Medicine conditions into a classification standard used in conventional medicine. WHO may develop additional modules classifying other prominent forms of Traditional Medicine in the future, provided that specific requirements (e.g. existing national classification and terminology standards and use cases) are met. Development of a Module 2 which derived from Ayurveda and related Traditional Medicine diagnostic systems has started.
• The Traditional Medicine Chapter is neither judging nor endorsing the scientific validity of any Traditional Medicine practice or the efficacy of any Traditional Medicine intervention.
• As a tool for counting and comparing Traditional Medicine conditions the Traditional Medicine Chapter of ICD-11 can provide the means for doing research and evaluation to establish efficacy of Traditional Medicine.
• The Traditional Medicine Chapter is used only for optional dual coding in the morbidity data collection (e.g. morbidity reporting, reimbursement, patient safety, research). The Traditional Medicine Chapter is NOT used for the mortality use case.

Why is a Traditional Medicine Chapter within ICD-11 needed?

• Traditional medicine is an area of health care in many Member States, and traditional practitioners, traditional knowledge, and traditional medicines are mentioned in the Declaration of Alma-Ata on Primary Health Care (1978) and the declaration of Astana^[1] as part of the provision of primary health care.
• Traditional medicine diagnosis in many countries around the world is currently not or poorly document and reported. Hence, aggregated and international comparable data on TM encounters in terms of form, frequency, effectiveness, safety, quality, outcome and cost is not available.
• The TM Chapter will help to respond to growing demands for more and better regulation and integration of TM in mainstream health care and Health Information Systems. Efforts to effectively regulate Traditional Medicine as an integral part of the health system requires standardized and evidence-based information.

What does the inclusion of a Traditional Medicine Chapter in ICD-11 enable?

• Counting of traditional medicine health service encounters and measure their form, frequency, effectiveness, safety, quality, outcomes and cost nationally and internationally.
• International comparability of practice, research and reporting of morbidity in traditional medicine. 
• Digitization of Traditional Medicine diagnostic data and easier integration into Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems.
• Better integration of Traditional Medicine diagnostic data in adverse-event reporting, insurance coverage and reimbursement systems, in line with larger WHO objectives relating to universal health coverage.
• Link Traditional Medicine practices with global norms and standard development.

[1] Declaration of Astana:

https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng95/documents/evidence-review-14

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1186/s13643-020-01329-2.pdf