At this week’s World Health Assembly in Geneva, Netherlands presented a statement on behalf of the EU and members, Norway, UK, USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand calling on WHO to do more to harmonise ICD-11 and SNOMED CT
The statement points to the significant number of countries that have moved beyond ICD to use higher granularity terminologies, in particular SNOMED CT, to support quality digital health information and interoperability
Concerningly, this is not well-reflected in the WHO progress report on ICD-11
WHO is asked to change course and engage with international standards organisations to enable global and national digital health strategies
The UK made its own supporting statement a few minutes later, calling for WHO recognition of SNOMED CT and the International Patient Summary (IPS)
Thanks for posting this Alastair. I think the UK’s statement (at 59:30) provided the clearest explanation of the issues at hand. Part of the desire for the WHO to engage with SDOs will shortly come to fruition when a new MoU with HL7 International is announced.
Also worth watching on for at the same link is the report from Alain Labrique, WHO Director of Digital Health and Innovation. DHI is the link between WHO and Global Digital Health Partnership and led the WHO Digital Documentation of COVID Certificates project
Interesting - hilarious muting moment there at the start!
I’m glad that others are fighting the good fight on the WHO stage. I’m quite sure I couldn’t hack the hours and hours of committees and proceedings without going quite mad.
And very good to hear that the leviathan has acknowledged that ICD-11 plowing on with utter disregard for SNOMED isn’t in everyone’s best interests.
Note for next time, must get the word leviathon into the statement! The masterstroke was to request that WHO stir from the deep once more to report back much sooner than the usual five years
