Taiwan is one of the fast aging countries, in order to prevent functional decline in the elderly, we followed the principles of Integrated Care for Older People (ICOPE), developed by the World Health Organization (WHO), to establish our own model and facilitate ICOPE assessments for older people in 2020.

    There are six key intrinsic capacities in the ICOPE, covering cognitive functions, mobility, nutrition, hearing, vision, and depression status. We have a payment scheme to service providers, mainly medical institutes, through local health authorities, who are supposed to monitor the service quality. We designed a standardized form including questions assessing six perspectives, with our own modification according to native culture, for clinical staff to carry out.

    Those who are assessed abnormal, will be taken care of by according to their level of capacity loss. Local health authorities were asked to inventory their community resources which are beneficial to restore the intrinsic capacities, and refer those who are in need, then may be followed up and reassessed based on their situations.

    As of end of 2023, we have around 1,000 medical institutes, such as pharmacies, clinics, optometry clinics, physical therapy facilities, and hospitals etc., to provide ICOPE services, and the amount of elderly who have been assessed was more than above 222 thousands people. These numbers continue to rise.