The mICF Foundation was formally registered in The Netherlands on 1 March 2019. This is a truly remarkable achievement in the development of the mICF ecosystem.
The primary mission of the Foundation is helping to reach health equity by promoting a bio-psycho-social-spiritual model to health and well-being. Its aim is therefore to revolutionise health and health care in developed and developing countries, by making the mICF Solution different from, though complementary to, all other mHealth applications generally based on the biomedical model.
The Foundation’s aim is to personalise healthcare by incorporating the functioning of a person and the contextual factors influencing health. This is expected to introduce changes on the existing continuum of systems for health.
The Foundation performs this feature using health informatics (big data) models to facilitate individualised, predictive care that will recognise each person’s functioning as a dynamic interaction between the person’s health condition, environmental factors, and personal preferences.
The responsibilities of the Foundation are therefore twofold:
- Custodianship of the core data assets of the mICF ecosystem, namely (a) FunctionMapper content and (b) users’ health data, as well as research to maintain and grow these data assets to ensure that it is relevant to users and competitive in the marketplace, striving to be best in its class. This is performed in close cooperation with ICanFunction International (IP holding company) that has responsibility for applied technology.
- A home for Research Partners, as key stakeholders and role players, given their historical contributions to realise the mICF concept and their future ambitions to attain health equity and a bio-psycho-social-spiritual approach to health care, using mICF as the vehicle. To perform this responsibility, the Foundation has to identify and support research (basic and applied) in specific areas as delineated by the mICF’s Objective Statement, including, but not limited, to funding.
Objectives of the mICF Foundation
Core activity 1: FunctionMapper
- Contribute towards the development of FunctionMapper by liaising with the owners.
- Contribute to and maintain the content of FunctionMapper, as well as derived classifications, instruments and encoding techniques, methods and technologies.
Core activity 2: Health Data
- Provide a home for the Health Databank as one part of the integrated health informatics for storage, management and informatics of data..
- Implement an innovative approach (such as ‘internet-of-value’ concepts) to entrench the person-centred principle of ownership and economic value, as well as protection, security and anonymisation of personal health data.
Core activity 3: Economic evaluation
- Conduct a socio-economic cost-benefit evaluation in a formal process to determine the ‘investment dividend’ derived, e.g. in terms of improved efficiency of health services, improved patient outcomes, service provider job satisfaction, etc.
Funding activity 1: Donor funding
- Procure funding contributions for the objectives of the Foundation, individually or collectively. However, ensure that no funding contribution may result in alienation of any IP rights of the Foundation (core IP, ICF codes and data) or the mICF ecosystem (IP applications, DApp).
Funding activity 2: Royalty payments
- Receive a share of royalty income derived in terms of licensing agreements from the IPHoldCo as custodian of implementation projects.
Capacity-building activity 1: Masterplan
- Procure and maintain a strategy, plans and roadmap to ensure futureproofing and competitive barriers for the mICF ecosystem, with special reference to the master objectives of health equity, self-perceived health, functioning and patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs), democratisation of health data and disruptive innovation regarding incentives.
Capacity-building activity 2: Basic research (R&d).
- Procure Researchers and research projects for advancing the core technology in line with the strategy, plans and roadmap of mICF.
mICF Foundation Business Model
In summary:
The mICF Foundation’s scope of business stipulates that it is:
- A home for Research Partners
- Custodian of the
- FunctionMapper
- Databank security-in-use
- Economic evaluation: socio-economic benefits
- Receiving funds from
- Donors / Grants
- Share of royalties from OpsCo implementations