Scientists and clinicians do, however, try to standardise how people rate their pain using some simple scales.

It requires police attending incidents in mental health units to wear body cameras to help standardise how such events are reported.

Dr Bloomfield says the ministry is developing a protocol and setting up a panel to standardise how these cases are managed and reported.

Basel is seeking to standardise how banks calculate risk-weighted assets to protect them from losses, which bankers say will make commodity finance even less appealing.

In 2014, the Toronto Paediatric Cancer Stage Guidelines were developed to standardise how PBCRs collect data on the stage at diagnosis for childhood cancer cases.