Authority lists for INTOX

Overview

Authority lists provide a controlled, defined vocabulary for describing poisoning cases. This ensures that different poisons centres, and staff within the same poisons centre, use the same terms to describe the same concept. This facilitates the comparison of case data collected by different centres e.g. for multi-centre studies. It also makes it possible to pool data from different centres e.g. to compile national statistics.

The terms in the Authority Lists were drawn up and agreed at a series of international working group meetings organized by IPCS. The working group adapted a number of existing lists of terms used by different poisons centres in order to generate a comprehensive and internationally agreed, harmonized terminology. Definitions were also agreed for these terms.

In order to allow flexibility, while maintaining comparability, the authority lists have a hierarchical structure: the top levels are intended to be fixed, while the content of the lowest level is determined by the user.

The authority lists are available to be used in any poisons centre data collection system.