TY - JOUR A1 - Stucki, G. A1 - Prodinger, Birgit A1 - Bickenbach, J. T1 - Four steps to follow when documenting functioning with the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health JF - European Journal of physical and rehabilitation medicine N2 - In this methodological note on applying the ICF in rehabilitation, we introduce suitable tools that allow us to document comprehensively and systematically the lived experience of health to guide clinical practice, the management of services, evidence-informed policy and scientific inquiry. The objective of this methodological note is to present the currently available tools with respect to four questions: 1) what ICF domains to document; 2) what perspective to take; 3) what data collection tools to apply; and 4) which approach to use for reporting. The application of these tools is illustrated using the Swiss Spinal Cord Injury (SwiSCI) Cohort Study. Existing ICF Sets provide a practical approach for identifying the domains to document. One can document from the perspective of biological health, lived health, and appraised health. For identifying suitable data collection tools, either existing tools can be linked to the ICF or available ICF-based data collection tools can be used. For reporting, an interval scale metric is suggested. The four step approach presented provides users with a logical sequence to follow when planning the documentation of functioning using the ICF as a health information reference system in practice and research. KW - ICF KW - Rehabilitation KW - Cohort study KW - Health Y1 - 2017 UR - https://doi.org/10.23736/S1973-9087.17.04569-5 VL - 53 IS - 1 SP - 144 EP - 149 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Grill, Eva A1 - Müller, Martin A1 - Mansmann, Ulrich ED - Springer Verlag, T1 - Health-exploring complexity: an interdisciplinary systems approach HEC 2016 JF - European journal of epidemiology N2 - Health is a complex process with potentially interacting components from the molecular to the societal and environmental level. Adequate research designs and data analysis methods are needed to improve our understanding of this complexity, to ultimately derive high quality evidence to inform patients, health professionals, and health policy decision makers. Also, effective patient-centred health care has to address the complexity of health, functioning, and disability, not only by implementing interventions, but also by using information technologythatrepresentsthecomplexityofhealthcaretoinformallactors. Given this background, we developed the concept of our conference HEC2016 as an interdisciplinary European event in beautiful Bavaria, in the city of Mu ¨nchen. Quite ironically this is the place, where William of Ockham, whose ideas of parsimony are the very opposite of complexity, accused of heresy, spent 17 years under the protection of the Bavarian King Ludwig IV. Furthermore, our local public health hero Max von Pettenkofer (1818–1901) contributed a lot to the basic systemic understanding of health, especially the relevance of a healthy environment. Under the joint theme of health as a complex system we joined the activities of five scientific disciplines: Medical Informatics, Medical Biometry, Bioinformatics, Epidemiology and Health Data Management. The mission behind this interdisciplinary effort was to serve as an important scientific forum for the exchange of new ideas and applications to strengthen health sciences on a national and international level. The analysis of health as a complex system opens needed perspectives on a challenging reality: filtering current hypotheses, resolving controversies, and tailoring interventions to the need of the individual within a health system environment. The conference encouraged the dialogue of the disciplines in order to advance our understanding of health and to decrease burden of disease. HEC2016 brought together the annual conferences of the German Association for Medical Informatics, Biometry and Epidemiology (GMDS), the German Society for Epidemiology (DGEpi), the International Epidemiological Association- European Region (IEA-EEF) and the European Federation for Medical Informatics Association (EFMI, MIE 2016). HEC2016 took place in Mu ¨nchen, Germany, in the main building of the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universita ¨t (LMU) from 28 August to 2 September 2016 under the auspices of the Institute for MedicalInformationProcessing,BiometryandEpidemiologyofLMU. The conference received 832 contributions for oral and poster presentation (Table 1). Fourteen percent of them were from outside Europe with the largest group of 10 % from Asia (Table 2). Scientific program committees and reviewers selected 408 submissions as oral contributions and 303 for poster presentations. The program was surrounded by twelve tutorials held by international renowned scientists and covered a broad spectrum from innovative biostatistical and epidemiological methods to tutorials in application of innovative software, scientific writing and data protection issues. Over 50 panel discussions and workshops allowed in-depth exchange of ideas on specific topics and underscored the interactive nature of HEC2016. A special focus of HEC2016 was on the promotion of young scientists from all disciplines whose participation was supported by numerous travel grants. We would like to express our deepest gratitude to all the colleagues who supported us as speakers, committee members and reviewers, lent us a hand before, during and after the conference, gave critical but friendly comments at all stages of the preparations, supported us by providing coffee, audience or Butterbrezen, and specifically to those who submitted contributions to the conference and attended the conference and its many tutorials, lectures and sessions. We extend our gratitude to the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft for generous financial support (grant no. GR 3608/4-1). Last not least we would like to thank our families who allowed us to spend most of our weekends with organizing this conference, to William of Ockham for lending us his razor (from time to time) and to Max von Pettenkofer for guidance. KW - Health Y1 - 2016 IS - 31 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Cieza, A. A1 - Fayed, N. A1 - Bickenbach, J. A1 - Prodinger, Birgit T1 - Refinements to the ICF Linking Rules to strenghten their potential for establishing comparability of health information JF - Disability and Rehabilitation N2 - Purpose The content of and methods for collecting health information often vary across settings and challenge the comparability of health information across time, individuals or populations. The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) contains an exhaustive set of categories of information which constitutes a unified and consistent language of human functioning suitable as a reference for comparing health information. Methods and results In two earlier papers, we have proposed rules for linking existing health information to the ICF. Further refinements to these existing ICF Linking Rules are presented in this paper to enhance the transparency of the linking process. The refinements involve preparing information for linking, perspectives from which information is collected and the categorization of response options. Issues regarding the linking of information not covered or unspecified within the ICF are also revisited in this paper. Conclusion: The ICF Linking Rules are valuable for enhancing comparability of health information to ensure that information is available in a consistent manner to serve as a foundation for evidence-based decision-making across all levels of health systems. The refinements presented in this paper enhance transparency in, and ultimately reliability of the process of, linking health information to the ICF. Implications for Rehabilitation The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) constitutes a unified and consistent language of human functioning suitable as a reference for comparing health information. Comparability of information is essential to ensure that the widest range of information is available in a consistent manner for any decision-maker at all levels of the health system. The refined ICF Linking Rules presented in this article outline the method to establish comparability of health information based on the ICF. KW - Comparability KW - Health KW - Information systems KW - International classification of functioning Y1 - 2019 UR - https://doi.org/10.3109/09638288.2016.1145258 VL - 41 IS - 5 SP - 574 EP - 583 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Banz, K. A1 - Wagenpfeil, S. A1 - Neiss, A. A1 - Hammerschmidt, Thomas A1 - Wutzler, P. T1 - The burden of varicella in Germany JF - The European Journal of Health Economics KW - Varicella KW - Health Y1 - 2004 VL - 2004 IS - 5 / 1 SP - 46 EP - 53 ER -