We are another year closer to going live with the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) in the United States. There have been recent exciting developments with ICD-11 in 2025. The World Health Organization (WHO) recently revealed the 2025 update to ICD-11, which has been defined as a tool that standardizes the language used by healthcare professionals across the world in reporting, diagnosing and monitoring diseases, injuries and causes of death.
The latest changes impact the standardization of the language used by healthcare professionals worldwide. This would result in enhancements with diagnosis monitoring and reporting which would set ICD-11 to revolutionize health systems on a global scale.
What are the updates in the 2025 edition?
- Additional new features to improve interoperability, accuracy and ease of use in national health systems.
- Ongoing expansion to improve global accessibility with multilingual expansion, including language support.
- Error detection enhancements with improvement in language variation recognition, spelling correction and data entry error reduction.
- Interoperability with external standards seamlessly integrating with MedDRA, Orphanet, and other classifications and terminologies.
The major medical classifications mentioned are:
- MedDRA is the classification for medical regulatory affairs and drug safety.
- Orphanet is the classification for rare diseases.
- Other international health terminologies that facilitate comprehensive health data reporting and analysis.
- A new module that covers traditional medicine conditions of Ayurveda and related traditional medicine systems, which includes Unani and Siddha, which enables systematic tracking of traditional medicine services, while enhancing global research, reporting and evidence-based policymaking.
On January 10, 2024, New Delhi launched ICD-11 TM-2. This specific update with this new module is the result of successful testing for the three systems of medicine for country- implementation testing. Due to the successful results, the traditional health systems of Auyrveda, Unani, and Siddha will now be officially categorized and documented in ICD-11, with the conventional medical conditions. The three traditional-related medicine systems mentioned are:
- Ayurveda is defined as the study of life. It is a holistic whole-body system of medicine that started more than 3,000 years ago in India which takes a natural approach to all aspects of health and well-being.
- The Unani system is based on the Hippocratic theory that presupposes the presence of four humours in the human body: “Dam” or blood, “Balgham” or phlegm, “Safra” or yellow bile, and “Sauda” or black bile. It aims for restoration of the equilibrium of various faculties and elements of the human body.
- The Siddha system is a system of medicine fundamentally based on the relationship between the universe and the human body, also referred to as “anda pinda thathuvam” from the Dravidian civilization.
FEATURES, PURPOSE AND IMPACT OF ICD-11
This list helps define the purpose and impact of ICD-11:
- Provides a standardized classification and terminology for seamless integration across various health information systems, languages and settings.
- Enhances health communication at a global level through advanced digital features.
- Serves as the basis for tracking and identifying statistics and health trends worldwide.
- Helps accelerate progress towards relevant national targets while addressing inequalities.
- Impacts how a population’s behaviors and views towards health conditions and diseases are shaped, how health care is received, how clinical providers reply to the need, and how policies play out in the provision of care.
- Supports and aligns with today’s advanced digital era including incorporating clinical content, but also the latest knowledge in user interface, digital computing, and modern technology.
- Promotes advanced natural language processing (NLP) which allows real-time data health information exchange worldwide.
- Enables latest innovations to improve clinical detail, complete coding and reporting at a faster rate with increased accuracy.
- Used in monitoring and assessing the efficacy, safety, and quality of care.
- Reflects ongoing improvement and progress in the world of medicine and science.
- Easily accessible to everyone and is completely digital.
- Enhances public health surveillance which results in improved public health interventions.
- Consists of more than 120,000 codable terms with around 17,000 unique codes.
- Requires less resources and time for training healthcare workers.
- Captures complete, accurate coding of rare diseases, cancer grades and stages, mental health, maternal and perinatal coding, etc. with a smart coding algorithm that interprets more than 1.6 million terms.
- Used for recording and reporting mortality and morbidity statistics nationally and internationally.
- Plays a role in shaping global health policies, healthcare delivery, and medical research.
THINGS TO CONSIDER FOR A SMOOTH TRANSITION TO ICD-11
- Initial Cost Implications – Tools, software updates, coding applications, training and education, data transfer/migration.
- Training and Education – Who? Which roles? Stakeholders? Where? Onsite vs. Remote? Space consideration? When? How long? Comprehensive training vs. high level overview? What resources? Training plan? Team of trainers?
- Update IT Systems and Technology – Software updates? System interface? Privacy and data integrity? 24-hour support? Maintain ongoing updates?
- Identify Key Leadership, Strong Team and Stakeholders – Responsible parties to oversee the various implementation steps and processes, orientation manual, updated Policies and Procedures.
- Identify and Document Best Practices – Compare to previous implementation challenges, identify what worked and what failed, root cause, corrective action plan.
- Stay Updated – Access latest updates, publications, references, resources from applicable regulatory agencies, coding updates, announcements, public meetings/forums, be proactive.
The latest 2025 ICD-11 updates mark a major milestone globally. ICD-11 plays an important role in healthcare delivery as it adopts advanced artificial intelligence (AI), multilingual support and enhancement, traditional medicine acknowledgement, and global health standards integration.
Find out more about Updates on ICD-11: What You Need to Know in our upcoming live Webinar on May 21, 2025. Learn more and/or register now to join us.
