ICD Code API

Fast, developer-friendly ICD-11 search API for real-world applications.

A simple, fast, and opinionated API for working with ICD-11 diagnostic codes, built to eliminate the friction of using the official WHO interface directly in applications.

Instead of dealing with complex hierarchies, authentication flows, and raw classification data — you get clean, searchable, production-ready responses.

Why this exists

The official World Health Organization ICD-11 system is powerful, but not designed for real-time application use.

Building medical software (especially EMRs) introduces common problems:

• Slow or complex search experience
• Hard-to-use hierarchical data
• Lack of synonym handling (“heart attack” vs “myocardial infarction”)
• Heavy integration overhead (OAuth, API complexity)
• Poor UX for autocomplete and clinical workflows

ICD Code API solves this by focusing on developer experience first.

What makes this different

Fast fuzzy search

Search ICD codes using natural language, typos, or partial terms.

• "high sugar" → Type 2 diabetes
• "heart attack" → Acute myocardial infarction
• "bp high" → Essential hypertension

Simple JSON response

No complex ontology structures in your frontend.

{
  "code": "5A11",
  "description": "Type 2 diabetes mellitus",
  "version": "ICD-11"
}

Built for autocomplete UX

Designed for:

• EMR diagnosis selection
• Search-as-you-type interfaces
• Clinical decision support tools

No authentication complexity

• No OAuth setup
• No token refresh flows
• Just HTTP requests and results

Getting Started

For local setup, database initialization, and development workflows, see the Getting Started Guide.

Example request

GET /v1/search?q=heart+attack

Example response

[
  {
    "code": "BA41",
    "description": "Acute myocardial infarction",
    "version": "ICD-11"
  }
]

Official WHO Resources

For developers who require official raw datasets or programmatic access directly from the World Health Organization:

• Official ICD-11 Portal: https://icd.who.int/en
• Official ICD-11 API: https://icd.who.int/icdapi
• Dataset Downloads: https://icd.who.int/browse/latest-release/mms/en#/downloaddata (Requires WHO Registration)

Use cases

• Electronic Medical Records (EMR systems)
• Hospital management software
• Clinical decision support tools
• Health tech startups
• Medical research platforms

Design philosophy

This project is built on a simple idea: ICD data should be usable, not just accessible.

So instead of exposing raw classification complexity, we:

• Flatten what should be simple
• Enhance what should be intuitive
• Optimize for real-world workflows, not theoretical correctness

Roadmap

• Offline dataset support (SQLite)
• Usage-based ranking improvements
• Multi-language medical term support
• Embedding-based semantic search
• EMR-ready SDKs (Go / Node / Python)

Contributing

Interested in contributing? Please see our Contribution Guidelines.

License

Open-source. Built for the healthcare developer community.

Why this matters

Healthcare software is often slowed down by tooling that wasn’t designed for real clinicians.

This project aims to make ICD classification: fast, intuitive, and invisible inside the workflow.