scope:

This International Standard specifies the minimal characteristics of a categorial structure for terminological systems of surgical procedures and the minimal domain constraints to support interoperability, comparability and the exchange of meaningful information on surgical procedures, independently of the language, insofar as the significant differences are specified by the system.

NOTE 1 Further characteristics or more detailed value sets can be used for specific purposes.

NOTE 2 Categorial structures support interoperability by providing common frameworks within which to develop terminological systems that can be related to each other, and to analyse the properties of different terminological systems in order to derive relationships between them.

This International Standard is applicable to terminological systems of surgical procedures in all surgical disciplines. It covers only the terminology part, as defined in ISO 1087-1:2000, of the terminological systems of surgical procedures.

It is intended to be used by:

- organizations involved with the development or maintenance of terminological systems for surgical procedures, namely for multipurpose terminological systems on a national or international level;

- organizations developing and maintaining software tools that allow natural clinical language expressions analysis, generation and mapping to the main existing terminological systems of surgical procedures.

This International Standard is intended to be used as an integrated part of computer-based applications and for electronic health care records. It is of limited value for manual use.

This International Standard is not suitable for, nor intended for use by, individual clinicians or hospital administrators. It is not the purpose of this International Standard to standardize the end user terminological system or to conflict with the concept systems embedded in national practice and languages.