Developing an international standard for the classification of surface anatomic location for use in clinical practice and epidemiologic research.

BACKGROUND: There is currently no universally adopted terminology for defining human surface anatomic location. The lack of precision, accuracy, and reliability of terms used by health care providers, in particular dermatologic surgeons, is unsatisfactory both for epidemiologic research and for high-quality patient care. OBJECTIVE: We sought to create a clinically relevant yet concise surface anatomy terminology for international use including the International Classification of Diseases and to map it to existing disparate terminologies. METHODS: Widely used surface anatomy terminology data sets and diagrams were reviewed. A Delphi consensus convened to create a novel surface anatomy terminology. The new terminology was hierarchically mapped to Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine terms and New York University numbers and physically mapped to 2-dimensional anatomic diagrams for clarity and reproducibility. RESULTS: The final terminology data set contains 519 discrete terms arranged in a 9-level hierarchy and has been adopted by the World Health Organization for the International Classification of Diseases, 11th revision. LIMITATIONS: Specification of most locations requires linking to laterality qualifiers. Fine granularity for larger sites may require the use of additional qualifiers. CONCLUSION: Consistent use of precise and accurate surface anatomy terms is crucial to the practice of dermatology, particularly procedural dermatology. The proposed terminology is designed to form the basis for evolution of a universally adoptable terminology set to improve patient care, interprovider communication, and epidemiologic tracking.

Collaboration between specialties for respiratory allergies in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD)-11.

BACKGROUND: The International Classification of Diseases (ICD) has been grouping the allergic and hypersensitivity disorders involving the respiratory tract under topographic distribution, regardless of the underlying mechanisms, triggers or concepts currently in use for allergic and hypersensitivity conditions. In order to strengthen awareness and deliberate the creation of the new "Allergic or hypersensitivity disorders involving the respiratory tract" section of the ICD-11, we here propose make the building process public. METHODS: The new frame has been constructed to cover the gaps previously identified and was based on consensus academic reports and ICD-11 principles. Constant and bilateral discussion was kept with relevant groups representing specialties and resulted in proposals submission into the ICD-11 online platform. RESULTS: The "Allergic or hypersensitivity disorders involving the respiratory tract" section covers 64 entities distributed across five main categories. All the 79 proposals submitted resulted from an intensive collaboration of the Allergy working group, relevant Expert working groups and the WHO ICD governance. CONCLUSION: The establishment of the ICD-11 "Allergic or hypersensitivity disorders involving the respiratory tract" section will allow the dissemination of the updated concepts to be used in clinical practice by many different specialties and health professionals.

Use of ontology structure and Bayesian models to aid the crowdsourcing of ICD-11 sanctioning rules.

The International Classification of Diseases (ICD) is the de facto standard international classification for mortality reporting and for many epidemiological, clinical, and financial use cases. The next version of ICD, ICD-11, will be submitted for approval by the World Health Assembly in 2018. Unlike previous versions of ICD, where coders mostly select single codes from pre-enumerated disease and disorder codes, ICD-11 coding will allow extensive use of multiple codes to give more detailed disease descriptions. For example, "severe malignant neoplasms of left breast" may be coded using the combination of a "stem code" (e.g., code for malignant neoplasms of breast) with a variety of "extension codes" (e.g., codes for laterality and severity). The use of multiple codes (a process called post-coordination), while avoiding the pitfall of having to pre-enumerate vast number of possible disease and qualifier combinations, risks the creation of meaningless expressions that combine stem codes with inappropriate qualifiers. To prevent that from happening, "sanctioning rules" that define legal combinations are necessary. In this work, we developed a crowdsourcing method for obtaining sanctioning rules for the post-coordination of concepts in ICD-11. Our method utilized the hierarchical structures in the domain to improve the accuracy of the sanctioning rules and to lower the crowdsourcing cost. We used Bayesian networks to model crowd workers' skills, the accuracy of their responses, and our confidence in the acquired sanctioning rules. We applied reinforcement learning to develop an agent that constantly adjusted the confidence cutoffs during the crowdsourcing process to maximize the overall quality of sanctioning rules under a fixed budget. Finally, we performed formative evaluations using a skin-disease branch of the draft ICD-11 and demonstrated that the crowd-sourced sanctioning rules replicated those defined by an expert dermatologist with high precision and recall. This work demonstrated that a crowdsourcing approach could offer a reasonably efficient method for generating a first draft of sanctioning rules that subject matter experts could verify and edit, thus relieving them of the tedium and cost of formulating the initial set of rules.

Reaching multidisciplinary consensus on classification of anaphylaxis for the eleventh revision of the World Health Organization's (WHO) International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11).

BACKGROUND: Although currently misclassified in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) and still not officially listed as a rare disease, anaphylaxis is a well-known clinical emergency. Anaphylaxis is now one of the principal headings in the "Allergic and hypersensitivity conditions" section recently compiled for the forthcoming 11th Revision of ICD (ICD-11). We here report the building process used for the pioneering "Anaphylaxis" subsection of ICD-11 in which we aimed for transparency as recommended in the ICD-11 revision guidelines. RESULTS: During an online intensive scientific and technical discussions with ICD-11 Topic Advisory Groups and Expert Working Groups, we drafted a total of 35 proposals for the classification of anaphylaxis. From all the 35 proposals, 77% were implemented, 20% remain to be implemented, and the others being partially implemented (1.5%) or rejected (1.5%). CONCLUSION: For the first time, anaphylaxis is now properly classified and has attained greater visibility within ICD. In addition to all the benefits expected from the actions we have undertaken in updating the terminology, definitions and classification of allergic and hypersensitivity conditions for ICD-11, we strongly believe that anaphylaxis should be a public health priority and that it should therefore be formally added into the list of rare diseases in order to support awareness and quality clinical management of patients.

Assessing psoriasis severity and outcomes for clinical trials and routine clinical practice.

Psoriasis is a complex disease. Dermatologists have not documented psoriasis severity, except in clinical trials; doing so requires tools for assessing psoriasis and an understanding of what changes in those assessments mean in terms of outcome. Two psoriasis assessment tools have dominated: The Psoriasis Area and Severity Index and the Dermatology Life Quality Index. There are advantages and disadvantages to each. Newer instruments may not be more suitable for documenting psoriasis. There may be benefits in terms of patient ownership of disease management from using self-assessment tools for documenting severity, for example, the Self-assessment version of the Simplified Psoriasis Index.

Responsiveness to change and interpretability of the simplified psoriasis index.

The Simplified Psoriasis Index (SPI) is a summary measure of psoriasis with separate components for current severity (weighted for functionally or psychosocially important sites), psychosocial impact, and past behavior. The current severity components of the professionally assessed SPI (proSPI-s) and self-assessed SPI (saSPI-s) have each been shown to be valid and reliable. Their responsiveness to change and equivalence to the current standard (Psoriasis Area and Severity Index, PASI) were investigated. Responsiveness and minimum clinically important differences (MCIDs) were derived from PASI changes from baseline at weeks 4 (n=100) and 10 (n=65) in patients commencing therapy for psoriasis. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis confirmed that both measures detected responsiveness well (area under the curve (AUC)=0.72-0.96). On ROC and PASI-based anchor analysis, MCIDs equated to mean absolute and percentage changes of 5 and 60% (proSPI-s), and 7 and 70% (saSPI-s). Satisfactory response as defined by 75% reduction in PASI equated to 85 and 95% reductions in proSPI-s and saSPI-s, respectively. PASI-equivalent cutoff scores for mild (PASI<10) and severe (PASI>20) psoriasis were <9 and >18 for proSPI-s (n=300) and <10 and >20 for saSPI-s (n=200; AUC=0.86-0.96). These studies further support the validity of SPI for use in routine clinical practice.

The Simplified Psoriasis Index (SPI): a practical tool for assessing psoriasis.

The Simplified Psoriasis Index (SPI) is a summary measure of psoriasis with separate components for current severity (SPI-s), psychosocial impact (SPI-p), and past history and interventions (SPI-i). It derives from the Salford Psoriasis Index but replaces Psoriasis Area and Severity Index (PASI) with a composite weighted severity score designed to reflect the impact of psoriasis affecting functionally or psychosocially important body sites. Two complementary versions are available, differing only in that current severity (SPI-s) is either professionally (proSPI-s) or patient self-assessed (saSPI-s). This study examined the criterion and construct validity and response distribution of proSPI-s, saSPI-s, and SPI-p in 100 patients with plaque psoriasis. A further 50 patients were assessed for test-retest reliability of these three components. Interrater reliability of proSPI-s was assessed in 12 patients, each assessed by 12 assessors (144 assessments). There was close correlation between PASI and proSPI-s (r=0.91); SPI-p was closely correlated with the Dermatology Life Quality Index (r=0.89). Strong intrarater (proSPI-s, saSPI-s, SPI-p, and SPI-i) and interrater (proSPI-s) reliability was demonstrated (all intraclass correlation coefficients >0.75). There were wide response distributions for all three components. We believe that both professional (proSPI) and self-assessed (saSPI) versions can readily be introduced into routine clinical practice.

Framework for improved communication: the Dermatology Lexicon Project.

A standardized dermatology vocabulary is central to our collective ability to gather clinical information consistently for patient care, to retrieve information for research or disease management, as well as to conduct outcomes analysis for quality improvement. The deficiencies of current classifications have been recognized by the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS) in their decision to fund the development of a standard complete reference terminology for dermatology. The Dermatology Lexicon will have a major impact both on clinical care and on dermatologic research. Accuracy in medical records and telemedicine communications will be improved. Reliable terminology will provide for more complete and consistent documentation and data aggregation and reporting. In order to create a useful, sustainable lexicon, involvement of the dermatology community is essential.