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

Mappings among terminologies to ensure homogeneous analysis among different data sources is one of the key challenges of semantic interoperability. Concretely, mappings to the International Classification of Diseases 10th Revision Procedure Classification System (ICD-10-PCS) are especially challenging due to its multiaxial structure and lack of terms used by physicians (many terminologies used in real world data (RWD) are initially intended for reimbursement, not for clinical purposes). In this work, we propose a new theoretical methodology for mapping healthcare data to the ICD-10-PCS by exploiting its multiaxial structure to reduce the search spaces within concepts and leveraging the dependencies between axes for inferring additional relevant information. We tested this methodology with a subset of the German Operation and Procedure Classification System (OPS), aiming to integrate heterogeneous data sources queried for clinical research.