Description of ENCODE-FM

The Ontario Family and General Practice Data Standards Project (on which Dr. Bernstein was a key member of the steering committee) determined that in 1992, there was no acceptable primary care nomenclature. ENCODE-FM was constructed with the recommendations of the Data Standards Report in mind. It is a standardized nomenclature of medical terms for both symptoms and diagnoses specifically designed to be used in an electronic record. Our research (see Research page - Publications) shows that classifying data using ENCODE-FM is highly reliable.

• designed for PRIMARY CARE, uniquely and specifically
• maps all terms to ICD-10, ICD-9CM and ICPC
• extendable to include all of ICD-10 and therefore usable for hospital data-recording
• used in all the Ontario Community Health Centres as mandated by the Province
• used in Quebec and British Columbia as incorporated into the EMR software of Clinidata Inc.
• fully bilingual, allowing data input in French and providing a bi-directional term translator
• hierarchical, allowing optimal degree of specificity of symptoms or diagnosis
• proven reliability when classifying data to the Canadian standard, ICD-10.