ICF and ICF-CY for an innovative holistic approach to persons with chronic conditions.

This introduction presents a brief review of projects carried out in Italy applying ICF model. ICF allows to capture and appropriately describe human functioning and disability in terms of body functions and body structures, life activities, participation in society, modulating contextual factors. ICF framework allows to have a complex profile of persons with different medical conditions. Several clinical studies have been performed using ICF and ICF-CY, in Italy from the publication of ICF in 2001 and ICF-CY in 2007. Most of them highlight the utility and feasibility of using ICF to describe the functional profiles of patients with different health conditions. The clinical applications of ICF clearly show that ICF-based functional profiles are useful in designing better interventions - directed not only to patients' health condition and symptoms but also to the most important activities of their daily living and environmental factors that may act as barriers or facilitators to the patients' recovery, well-being and participation in society.