International Classification committee (WICC) annual report

The annual WONCA International Classification Committee (WICC) meeting in 2017 was held from 26 August to 1 September in Lyon/France. There were 23 members and six observers participating. The main topics were the international ICPC-3 Consortium founded for the development of a new version of the International Classification of Primary Care (ICPC-3) under the lead of Kees van Boven at the University of Nijmegen/Netherlands and its relationship to WICC. Furthermore the WICC directly worked on the content of the future ICPC-3. Another important topic was the development of a primary care version (linearization) of ICD-11 in collaboration with WHO.

In the meantime the ICPC-3 Consortium took up its work which can be followed at the Consortium website. Another website to keep informed about the work of WICC is the PH3C-website.

At the midyear meeting of the WHO-Family of International Classifications (WHO-FIC) Network in Geneva at the 14./15. April 2018 there were discussions about the current state of the primary care version of ICD-11. The main change from ICD-10 to ICD-11 will be a switch from the former big book to a software based version published as a searchable database to be incorporated in other software systems. Another change will be that a so called foundation layer has been created, containing all concepts of the domain of medicine in a defined manner with semantic linkages (is part of…, relates to…) in all possible directions (so called multi-parenting). The classifications are built on this foundation layer which is why they are called linearizations. One of these linearizations is the Joint Linearization for Morbidity and Mortality Statistics (JLMMS) which recently has been released as a version for preparing implementation in member states, including translations, on 18 June 2018. In the beginning an independent primary care linearization both for the high and a low resource setting in a telescopic structure, based directly on the foundation layer was planned. Up to now only a simple pick-list from JLMMS as a short version for primary care has been achieved in a preliminary version. This is disappointing but was to be expected as nobody was willing or capable of investing into sufficient work force to achieve the former goal.

This years WHO-FIC annual conference will be held in Seoul/South-Korea. Due to the anniversary of the declaration of Alma-Ata the overarching topic of the conference will be primary health care. We hope this will bring the needs of primary care to the center.

This year’s meeting of WICC will be held in Lviv in Ukraine from 24 -29. August 2018. Again, the main topic will be the collaboration with the Consortium and common work on content of ICPC-3. Vivid discussions are to be expected. Anybody interested in the work of WICC will be welcome.

Prof Thomas Kühlein
Chair, WICC
thomas.kuehlein@uk-erlangen.de