ISO 13120

Description / Abstract: Main purposes

The main purpose of this International Standard is to formally represent the content and hierarchical structure of healthcare classification systems in markup language for the safe exchange and distribution of data and structure between organizations and dissimilar software products.

The scope of healthcare classifications systems covered in this International Standard encompasses terminologies, and is constrained to traditional paper-based systems (like ICD-10) and systems built according to categorical structures and a cross thesaurus (like ICNP). This International Standard is intended for representation of healthcare classification systems in which classes have textual definitions, hierarchical ordering, named hierarchical levels (such as "chapter", "section"), inclusion-and exclusion criteria, and codes. It is not intended to cover any formal representation, either for definition or composition, of concepts, or for specification of classification rules. Systems with such formal specifications can at best be partially represented using this International Standard, and are hence out of scope.

Topics considered outside the scope of this International standard

This International Standard is no intended to:

a) provide a normative syntax on how a healthcare classification system is to be constructed;

b) define link types between elements in a healthcare classification system; this is left to the developers of healthcare classification systems;

c) provide a representation for direct viewing or printing.