Injury classification systems are used in sports medicine for two main purposes: (1) to accurately classify diagnoses for research, maintaining diagnostic detail and also permitting easy grouping into parent classifications for summary and (2) to create a database from which cases can be extracted for research on particular injuries. The Orchard Sports Injury Classification System (OSICS) was developed in 1992 for the first purpose, a study that examined the incidence of injury at the elite level of football in Australia. At the time, there was no relevant published sports injury classification system that was free of copyright. As usage has expanded, partly due to its free availability, the OSICS has been revised many times over the past 14 years. A recent study found that OSICS-8 led to a fair degree of agreement between 3 coders, although it was superior to the ICD-10-AM in this respect and was significantly faster to use when applied to sports medicine diagnoses. A recent major revision of OSICS-8, resulting in the development of a new 4 character OSICS-10, was made to improve OSICS inter-user agreement by making it easier to use and better able to cater for all possible diagnoses encountered in a sports medicine setting. The OSICS-10 should provide far greater depth of coding for the benefit of those looking for greater diagnostic accuracy. The OSICS-10 is also structured to easily collapse down into parent classifications. For those researchers wanting information collected under broader injury headings, particularly those not using fully computerized systems, the simplicity of the OSICS-8 system, also presented, may still suffice. A map from OSICS-8 to the new OSICS-10 has also been prepared to make transitions easier for users of the old system.
Please make acknowledgement of OSICS whenever you use this in a commercial project or scientific paper.
Open the Excel version of OSICS10 (.xls file)
Open the Excel version of OSICS8 (.xls file)
Open the .pdf version of OSICS version 8.2 (.pdf file)
Download an Access database of OSICS version 8.2 (.mdb file, 524 KB)
Download Excel spreadsheet version of OSICS 7.0.xls (.xls file, 146KB)
1. Rae K, Britt H, Orchard J, Finch C. Classifying sports medicine diagnoses: a comparison of the International classification of diseases 10-Australian modification (ICD-10-AM) and the Orchard sports injury classification system (OSICS-8). British Journal of Sports Medicine. 2005;39:907-911. Click to view.
2. Seward H, Orchard J, Hazard H, Collinson D. Football Injuries in Australia. Canberra: Australian Sports Commission; 1995.
3. Seward H, Orchard J, Hazard H, Collinson D. Football Injuries in Australia at the elite level. Medical Journal of Australia. 1993;159:298-301. Click to view.
4. Orchard J. Orchard Sports Injury Classification System (OSICS). Sport Health. 1993;11(3):39-41.
5. Orchard J. Orchard Sports Injury Classification System (OSICS). In: Bloomfield J, Fricker P, Fitch K, eds. Science and Medicine in Sport. 2nd ed. Melbourne: Blackwell; 1995:674-681.
6. Orchard J, Seward H. Epidemiology of injuries in the Australian Football League, seasons 1997-2000. British Journal of Sports Medicine. 2002;36:39-45. Click to view.
OSICS-10 in the Clinical Journal of Sport Medicine (.pdf)
Link to Australian Sports Injury Data Dictionary
Click to search PubMed for other scientific articles using OSICS.
Click here to search on Google for websites on
OSICS.Link to Sports Injury Manager OSICS page
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