Question

ICD-10 has been in effect in the US since October 1, 2015, however, even before ICD-10 was released the WHO was already working on the Beta of ICD-11. Discuss the implementation, the known problems and issues as well as the concerns and criticisms.

Answer 1

The ICD-11 Beta stage commenced on May 14, 2012. The ICD-11 Beta is not the final version, and will continue to be changed as per the input from the stakeholders for five years during this stage. An ICD-11 version was released on June 18, 2018, which allowed member countries to start implementation preparations, including translation of ICD-11 into their own languages. This was officially endorsed by all member countries of WHO during the 72nd World Health Assembly held on May 25, 2019. This will only be implemented in 2022 after revisions.

Many issues were noticed in ICD-11 and there were many concerns and criticisms as well. The number one concern was too many innovations, which discontinues the stability of ICD 10. The ICD Structure fixing work is not yet completed. The ICD foundation content and linearization is quite confusing. ICD-11 Beta is nonfunctional now. This is prone to spam and distortions by groups with vested interests. The software of ICD-11 Beta is unable to handle social computations from sites such as Facebook, Linked-in, Social Reader etc. It would be premature to plan now to change to ICD-11 when major ICD-10 applications are not implemented.