An R Package for Working with the German Modification of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems

About this Package

The ICD-10 classification of diseases and related health problems (ICD-10) is an international standard for the coding of health service data. In Germany, the German Instutite of Medical Documentation and Information (DIMDI) releases a German Modification (ICD-10-GM) of the classification that forms a compulsory part of all remuneration claims in the ambulatory and hospital sectors.

This package was created to facilitate the analysis of data coded using the ICD-10-GM. In particular, it has the following aims:

  1. Provide convenient access to the extended ICD-10-GM metadata
  2. Identify and extract ICD-10 codes from character strings
  3. Facilitate the specification of ICD codes for analysis, utilising the ICD hierarchy (e.g. given the specification “A0” return all subcodes in the range “A01” to “A09”)
  4. Enable the historization of ICD specifications by applying the automatic code transitions provided by DIMDI, identifying potentially problematic codes

ICD10gm is designed for use in the context of medical and health services research using routinely collected claims data. It is not suitable for use in operative coding as it does not include all relevant metadata (e.g. inclusion and exclusion notes and the detailed definitions of psychiatric diagnoses). The metadata provided in the ICD10gm package is not intended to replace the official DIMDI documentation, which should always be consulted when specifying ICD codes for analysis.

The packge is functional and is in active use, but minor bugs may be present. In preparation for a possible CRAN release, current effort is focussed on documentation, testing and minor convenience features.

Getting Started

The package is not (yet) available from CRAN but can be installed from github as follows:

# Install the devtools package if not already installed
if (!("devtools" %in% .packages(all.available=TRUE))) install.package("devtools")

# Install ICD10gm package from github
devtools::install_github("edonnache/ICD10gm")

Basic Use

The core functionality of the package is demonstrated in the accompanying vignette.