The paradigm shift in healthcare in the last 20 years is characterized by an increase of chronic health conditions. Those usually present as a spectrum of limitations of functioning modified by the interactions between persons and environment (physical and social). The World Health Organization (WHO) provides a framework to describe and classify such variability among individuals with the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF).
Currently there is no user-friendly and cost efficient method in social and healthcare systems to comprehensively collect and monitor a person’s functional and contextual health-related data using ICF or any other structural framework by the patient or their caregivers. To address the needs for universal health coverage and patient-centeredness, an easy to use, mobile based version of the ICF – mobile ICanFunction app (mICF) – is proposed to facilitate patient-driven and -owned data, and interprofessional holistic care by addressing the needs of service users through shared decision-making and patient-reported outcome measures.
mICF could facilitate the dawn of a new era of universally affordable, accessible, personalized, predictive, sustainable, integrated, community-based interprofessional and transprofessional healthcare. We represent an international partnership with 284 collaborators (professionals and ePatients) from 39 countries engaged in developing the mICF – ICanFunction platform that will enable citizens to build their own functional profiles based on the taxonomy of the ICF.
It is envisaged that mICF will:
- ensure accurate, efficient and standardized capture of functional status and contextual information, thereby facilitate the systemic understanding of health by service users and frontline service providers,
- convey information securely between different service settings, improving effective communication between service providers and/or users,
- facilitate shared decision-making for intervention (including prevention and prediction) by making person-driven and patient-owned data readily available and by defining meaningful goals and outcomes, facilitate administration and reporting through the aggregation of data, and
- minimize the need for repeat data collection. In 2015 we received funding for a first prototype of our application through the Finnish Social Insurance Institution. By demonstration and live discussion with ePatients we hope to engage partners and sponsors worldwide to join our efforts to provide personalized healthcare based on function increasing social participation.