IMO® Problem

IMO® Problem is a clinical diagnosis and problem vocabulary which contains synonyms, acronyms and lexical variants that are commonly used by clinicians, coders and patients. The current IMO® Problem data source contains approximately 170,000 terms and concepts representing over 16,000 ICD-9-CM codes and terms. The data source represents a significant improvement over typical ICD-9 based controlled vocabulary because it allows clinicians to use the language that is most familiar to them to document patients' encounter diagnoses, problem lists, and medical histories. In addition, the vocabulary is cross-linked with the ICD textual descriptions (as published by CMS), SNOMED® CT, MeSH, and UMLS where possible, and is represented in both hierarchical and semantic classifications. Incorporating IMO® Problem will ease the anticipated future adoption of ICD-10-CM, reducing the effort to undertake a major migration of coded health information. IMO® Problem will incorporate ICD-10-CM when it is required in the U.S. The vocabulary is available as an embedded database or an easy-to-use web portal.

In an EMR setting, the following is how diagnosis terminology systems compare...

Criteria	ICD-9-CM alone	SNOMED® CT alone	IMO Problem (IT) with links to SNOMED® CT and ICD-9
Ensures billable codes are entered into chart
Unique ID to maintain stable term-to-code and code-to-term mappings over time
Preferred map from terms to administrative codes (every term has a billable code) and from codes to terms
Clinician friendly terms (vernacular, common, abbreviations, acronyms, eponyms)
Patient friendly terms
Provides different maps for clinicians, coders, and patients
Linkage to SNOMED® CT, MeSH, UMLS
AHIMA review of explicit maps
Captures clinical intent
Support for longitudinal care tagging
Updates per year	1-2	2	10
New code request turnaround time	1+years	months+	~6 weeks