Bridging the Version Gap: Multi-version Training Improves ICD Code Prediction, Especially for Rare Codes

ArXi:2605.17755v1 Announce Type: new Clinical coding maps clinical documentation to standardized medical codes, an essential yet time-consuming administrative task that could benefit from automation. Current models on ICD coding are typically optimized for codes from a specific ICD version. However, in reality, ICD systems evolve continuously, and different versions are adopted across time periods and regions. Moreover, ICD coding suffers from the long-tail problem, and rare code performance can be a bottleneck for developing implementable models.