scope:

This Technical Report provides guidance for organizations charged with creating or applying maps to meet their business needs. It explains the risks inherent in the mapping process and discusses the issues that need to be considered in the development, maintenance, and use of maps in health care. This Technical Report also identifies variations in process, precision, and administration when mapping for different purposes and in different environments.

Importantly, this Technical Report establishes and harmonizes the basic principles for developing, maintaining, and using maps and gives guidelines for good practice that underpin the mapping process. Terminological resources includes terminologies, classifications, and code systems used in the regulatory environment as it relates to healthcare and reporting requirements in healthcare.

This Technical Report is general in nature and does not describe the specific methods applied in the mapping process nor does it describe maps between databases and data sets, even though many of the principles stated here will apply to those types of maps. This Technical Report does not include consideration of the intellectual property rights and expectations of the owners of terminologies or classifications. It is the responsibility of the mapper and process to ensure that these legal rights are protected and acknowledged as part of the mapping processes.