Medical coding involves transforming descriptions of medical diagnoses and procedures into universal medical code numbers. These code numbers are used for variety of purposes like statistical analysis of diseases and therapeutic actions, reimbursements and direct surveillance of epidemic or pandemic outbreaks. Most of the outsourced work involves coding for insurance reimbursements. The diagnoses and procedures are usually taken from a variety of sources within the medical record, such as the transcription of the doctor’s notes, laboratory results, radiologic results, and other sources.

This allied health profession is very different form medical writing. Medical writing is more of a creative work involving research, analysis and communication of the obtained information in varied forms as per the audience.

A medical coder requires knowledge of medical terminologies and general understanding of diseases. However, a medical writer needs to have wide variety of skills to write on various topics and for different target group. Medical coding is considered more of a mechanical work when compared to the creativity involved in medical writing