BACKGROUND: The International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health (ICF), a classification system published in 2001 by the World Health Organization (WHO), provides a common language and framework for describing functional status information (FSI) in health records. METHODS: Informed by ongoing research in coding FSI in patient records, this paper qualitatively assesses the ICF framework with respect to the desiderata for controlled medical vocabularies, an enumerated a list of desirable qualities for controlled medical vocabularies proposed by Cimino [J.J. Cimino, Desiderata for controlled medical vocabularies in the twenty-first century, Meth. Inform. Med. 37 (1998) 394-403]. RESULTS: The ICF satisfies 5 of the 12 desiderata. Five points were not satisfied and two points could not be evaluated. CONCLUSION: The ICF is a rich source of relevant terms, concepts, and relationships, but it was not developed in consideration of requirements for formal terminologies. Therefore, it could serve as a base from which to develop a formal terminology of functioning and disability. This assessment is a key next step in the development of the ICF as a sensitive, universal measure of functional status.
BACKGROUND: The International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health (ICF), a classification system published in 2001 by the World Health Organization (WHO), provides a common language and framework for describing functional status information (FSI) in health records. METHODS: Informed by ongoing research in coding FSI in patient records, this paper qualitatively assesses the ICF framework with respect to the desiderata for controlled medical vocabularies, an enumerated a list of desirable qualities for controlled medical vocabularies proposed by Cimino [J.J. Cimino, Desiderata for controlled medical vocabularies in the twenty-first century, Meth. Inform. Med. 37 (1998) 394-403]. RESULTS: The ICF satisfies 5 of the 12 desiderata. Five points were not satisfied and two points could not be evaluated. CONCLUSION: The ICF is a rich source of relevant terms, concepts, and relationships, but it was not developed in consideration of requirements for formal terminologies. Therefore, it could serve as a base from which to develop a formal terminology of functioning and disability. This assessment is a key next step in the development of the ICF as a sensitive, universal measure of functional status.
Authors: Anne M Turner; Julio C Facelli; Monique Jaspers; Thomas Wetter; Daniel Pfeifer; Laël Cranmer Gatewood; Terry Adam; Yu-Chuan Li; Ming-Chin Lin; R Scott Evans; Anna Beukenhorst; Hugo Johan Theodoore van Mens; Esmee Tensen; Christian Bock; Laura Fendrich; Peter Seitz; Julian Suleder; Ranyah Aldelkhyyel; Kent Bridgeman; Zhen Hu; Aaron Sattler; Shin-Yi Guo; Islam Md Mohaimenul Mohaimenul; Dina Nur Anggraini Ningrum; Hsin-Ru Tung; Jiantano Bian; Joseph M Plasek; Casey Rommel; Juandalyn Burke; Harkirat Sohih Journal: Appl Clin Inform Date: 2017-06-20 Impact factor: 2.342