Summary
Background: The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) has
been available as a means of coding life functions but the coding process is cumbersome
due to the large number of ICF codes. In the current study, we developed ICF code
selection tools to support the coding of activity and participation data recorded
in domiciliary mental health care reports.
Methods: We first developed a search system to facilitate the selection of ICF codes by tracking
back through codes’ conceptual trees using a directory tool. We performed a morphological
analysis on the training data set to correlate nouns with the ICF codes and obtained
an analysis corpus to which numerical scores representing the frequencies of associated
ICF codes for each noun were assigned. Based on the obtained corpus we developed a
full-text search tool, which could simplify ICF coding relative to that performed
using the directory tool. We then evaluated the usefulness of the former tool on the
test data set.
Results: Using the full-text search tool, correct ICF codes were recorded in the first candidate
list for only 54.2% of sentences. However, correct ICF codes appeared on the combined
candidate lists for 90.1% of sentences and on the top three candidate lists for 71.7%.
In a specific case (General Tasks and Demands), 100% of the correct codes were included
on the combined candidate lists.
Conclusion: We developed selection tools that effectively supported ICF coding, although it was
impossible to fully automate ICF coding. This indicated that ICF codes could more
effectively be applied to mental health care.
Keywords
ICF (International Classification of Functioning - Disability and Health) - coding
- mental health - nurses’ record