Health information and the importance of clinical coding

Clinical coding is the process of converting health information, which may be a combination of free text language and a clinician's interpretation of this, into a computer-readable formal language. Well-known examples of clinical coding systems include the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10) and Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine Clinical Terms (SNOMED CT). These coding systems exist to avoid the complexities and ambiguity of human language and convey benefit to both individual clinicians and patients, but also by allowing for data analysis at the scale of entire populations. Advantages to proper clinical coding for individual hospitals or practices include audit, research, creation of decision support systems, accurate communication between teams, and to ensure hospitals receive appropriate re-numeration for their services. At the national level such coding allows for epidemiological study and the strategic allocation of health resources, whilst at the international level clinical coding allows for statistical reporting, monitoring of health inequality, and unambiguous communication between countries in a common language.

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