Mapping clinical procedures to the ICD-10-PCS: The German operation and procedure classification system use case

Area of Science:

• Health Informatics
• Medical Terminology
• Data Science

Background:

• Semantic interoperability is crucial for analyzing diverse healthcare data sources.
• Mapping to the International Classification of Diseases 10th Revision Procedure Classification System (ICD-10-PCS) is challenging due to its complexity and limited clinical terms.
• Real-world data (RWD) terminologies often prioritize reimbursement over clinical utility.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose a novel theoretical methodology for mapping healthcare data to ICD-10-PCS.
• To address the challenges posed by ICD-10-PCS's multiaxial structure and physician terminology.
• To facilitate the integration of heterogeneous data sources for clinical research.

Main Methods:

• Exploiting the multiaxial structure of ICD-10-PCS to reduce concept search spaces.
• Leveraging dependencies between ICD-10-PCS axes to infer additional relevant information.
• Testing the methodology using a subset of the German Operation and Procedure Classification System (OPS).

Main Results:

• The proposed methodology effectively maps healthcare data to ICD-10-PCS.
• The approach enhances the integration of heterogeneous data sources.
• Demonstrated feasibility using the German Operation and Procedure Classification System (OPS).

Conclusions:

• The developed methodology offers a promising solution for semantic interoperability with ICD-10-PCS.
• This work contributes to more homogeneous analysis of diverse clinical research data.
• The approach addresses key challenges in mapping clinical data to structured procedure classifications.