International classification of traditional medicine

The International Classification of Diseases (ICD) provides alphanumeric codes that have a longstanding place in the annals of contemporary medicine for epidemiology, health management, and clinical diagnoses from patient encounters to death certificates. This system is maintained by the World Health Organization (WHO). Traditional medicine (TM) has historical usage patterns established by treating people through the centuries but has never before been included in the ICD code set. The inclusion of traditional Asian medicine in the International Family of Classifications is a new venture and scheduled to be included in the ICD-11 revision of the codes. This may enable the comparison of diagnostic, clinical outcome, and epidemiological information across medical systems. WHO recently completed a survey among member nations and discovered that 82% of the world's population uses some form of TM.(2.)

Keywords: ICD-11; International Classification of Disease; World Health Organization; codes; globalization; traditional medicine.

PMID: 24278830 PMCID: PMC3833512 DOI: 10.7453/gahmj.2012.1.4.005