International Standards Efforts

The international data standards community is actively involved in various standards development initiatives.

• International Classification of Disease

  • International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) - The ICF was first created in 1980 by the World Health Organization (WHO) to provide a unifying framework for classifying the consequences of disease and it complements the ICD-10 which contains information on diagnosis and health condition, but not on functional status.

  • International Classification of Diseases - 10th Revision (ICD-10) - The tenth revision of a series formalized in 1893 that groups conditions for general epidemiological purposes and the evaluation of health care. The ICD-10 consists of tabular lists containing causes-of-death titles and codes, inclusion and exclusion terms for cause-of-death titles, an alphabetical index to diseases and nature of injury, external causes of injury, table of drugs and chemicals, and description, guidelines, and coding rules(1) .
     

• World Health Organization (WHO)
  The World Health Organization is the United Nation's specialized agency for health established in 1948. Its objective is the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of health.
   

• United Nations Statistics Division
  The Statistics Division of the United Nations compiles statistics from many international sources and produces global updates and it also provides to countries, specifications of the best methods of compiling information so that data from different sources can be readily compared.
   

• International Organization for Standardization (ISO)
  International Organization for Standardization is the world's largest developer of standards, through a network of the national standards institutes of 148 countries and its principal activity is the development of technical standards.
   

• Eurostat
  Eurostat is the Statistical Office of the European Communities and its task is to provide the European Union with statistics at European level that enable comparisons between countries and regions.
   

• Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI)
  The Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) is an independent, pan-Canadian, not-for-profit organization working to improve the health of Canadians and the health care system by providing quality, reliable and timely health information.
   

• HL7 Electronic Health Record (EHR)
  Health Level Seven, an ANSI accredited, not-for-profit standards developing organization, was selected by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Veteran's Administration to develop a standard for the electronic health record.

(1) Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics (April 20, 2004). International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision (ICD-10) [On-line], Available: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/about/major/dvs/icd10des.htm.