Automated Medical Mortality Data System (MMDS) Workshops: April 2009, Jamaica; June 2009, Barbados; and September 2009, Grenada

MMDS is an automated mortality coding system that can be incorporated into a mortality surveillance system to assist with coding causes of death listed on the medical certificate of cause of death and selecting the underlying cause of death. MMDS was developed by the National Centre for Health Statistics (NCHS), a department of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and has been used at state level for over 15 years. 

MMDS is a stand-alone system which will work on any Microsoft based computer.  The tool uses the coding rules set out in the NCHS Decision Tables that are currently used in manual coding. The key aspect of this system is that users can enter the ‘literal’ terms from the cause of death section on the medical certificate of death along with other key information from the certificate and the system assigns ICD-10 codes to the conditions causing death and then selects the underlying cause of death code. 

There are instances where MMDS fails to assign codes and select the underlying cause of death and in such cases, certificates will require manual coding.

The objective of the 2-day workshops was to train mortality coders in the installation and use of the mortality data system to assist countries with the lengthy coding and underlying cause of death selection process. A mortality coder from St. Vincent and the Grenadines participated in the workshop conducted in Barbados.